Taking Chances
by Max Alleyne
Summary: It wasn't until he heard all the details that Dean wanted to take the case, and then he was tearing out of there like a bat out of hell.  Dean/OC. Sequel to "The World As We Know It," though it can stand alone.
1. Meetings

**Author's Note: So, this is a sequel to another fic that I wrote called "The World As We Know It." However, if you haven't read that one, I'm planning to write this one in a way so that it will stand alone. Eventually, all will be explained, I promise. But, as I've never done a sequel before, I'm kinda counting on your feedback to let me know what's working and what isn't. So please, please, please enjoy and review!**

* * *

><p>Sam Winchester grew up melting down the family silver to make bullets. When most nine year olds were reaching for their teddy bears when they were scared, Sam was reaching for the salt. In high school, when asked to write about how he spent his summer vacation, he wrote about hunting down a werewolf with his father and brother. He grew up in a family where going to college—a top-tier school that most other kids would give their first-born son to get into—was an act of rebellion. Sam Winchester spent the majority of his childhood—and most of his adult life to date—thinking that he would never be closer to another human being than he was to his brother. To say that his life had been strange was something of an understatement.<p>

So for Sam Winchester to say that someone was acting strange really meant something. Especially when that someone was his brother.

Because the thing is, Dean Winchester was the one who explained why they had to melt the silver to make bullets. Dean was the one who tried to keep Sam reaching for that teddy bear as long as he possibly could because he didn't want his brother to be afraid of the things that go bump in the night. When Sam was working on that paper for his high school English class, Dean was the one who teased him about how everyone was going to think he was a complete geek for writing a fantasy piece when the prompt was nonfiction. Dean was the one reservation that Sam had about leaving for Stanford. To say that Sam knew his brother well was also something of an understatement.

So when Sam Winchester says that his brother's acting strange, it really means something.

"What's up with you, Dean?" Sam asked.

"Nothing," Dean answered, not taking his eyes off the road. It's a good thing, too, because if they were to get in a wreck at ninety-five miles an hour, they were both going to be dead as a doornail.

"Don't give me that. You've been acting strange ever since I found this case for us. As soon as I started telling you the details, you were tearing out of there like a bat out of hell."

"It's nothing. We just needed a new case, you know?"

Sam stared at his brother, who—again—didn't look up from the road to see Sam's look of disbelief. Of course, Dean's peripheral vision wasn't really the best right now considering that his right eye was still bruised and partially swollen. But then, letting Lucifer beat the hell out of you will do that to a person.

"We just needed a new case, huh? Then how come you were so quick to say 'Hey man, we just beat Lucifer. Let's take a break, you know?' Until I started telling you about this case, you wanted to sit on your ass on a beach somewhere sipping margaritas."

"Margaritas? They give me heartburn."

"Yeah, that's not what you said on Cinco de Mayo."

Very briefly, Sam saw a flash of the brother he was used to: the one who liked lots of booze, violence, and pretty women—not necessarily in that order. Dean grinned at him, and then it was gone in an instant and he was staring intently at the road.

"Dean, something is going on—"

"Sam, just stop, okay? I'm not in my sharing and caring mood right now. We've got some kind of evil son of a bitch out there raping and killing people. Now isn't exactly time to be sharing our feelings. Now tell me a little more about the case."

Sam sighed in frustration and looked down at the news clippings and files in his lap. Thankfully, the police department in Winston-Salem had been more than forthcoming in their files—especially to an FBI agent who was eager to take the case off his hands—and had promptly e-mailed all of them. This included crime scene photos, witness statements, and a full timeline of events.

"So far, we've got five victims. The first two are dead, the third and fourth are sick, and I'm willing to bet that the fifth will get sick within the next twelve hours. The first victim was Katherine Walters, age 23. She was a philosophy major, women's and gender studies minor. A 9-1-1 call came in at 1:23 AM. She said that someone had broken into her house and attacked her. When paramedics and police arrived, they realized that she'd been…sexually assaulted."

There was a long, uncomfortable silence in the Impala, broken only by the sound of the engine roaring as Dean shifted gears and continued flying down the highway. His jaw clenched as he considered the words, but he said nothing.

"According to her statement, she said that she had just gotten settled in bed when she saw a bright light outside her window. Her words were, "It was like a bright, floating ball of fire." The police suspect that it was a blown streetlight outside of her house—"

"A sign of demonic activity?" Dean suggested.

"What demon causes a burst of fiery light? Flickering lights, sure. But none of them cause lights to appear out of nowhere."

"Alright. What else do we have?"

"Katherine said that was just starting to drift off to sleep when the bright light woke her up. She said that was when she realized that someone was in her room. She tried to get up and run, but they sat on her chest and she couldn't get away. That's when he…"

"Yeah, I got it."

"All the others were the same. They saw the light, realized someone was in their room, and that's when they were attacked."

"Okay, anything else they've got in common?" Dean asked, despite the fact that they had been over all of this before.

It had been a perfectly normal morning—well, as normal as a morning can be for two guys who go toe-to-toe with Lucifer himself and manage to walk away from it—until Sam had started telling Dean about this case. Dean had been taking his time in the shower—clearly working up to another lazy day of lounging in the bed watching bad infomercials—when Sam had started pestering him about this case. When he had started going over the details of it, Dean had flipped his shit.

It hadn't been in a loud, angry sort of way. No, that sort of emotional display was a bit beyond Dean, who was pretty much an emotional shut-in. Instead, Dean had very calmly but quickly packed up his stuff—all fives shirts, four pairs of jeans, and various firearms—and encouraged Sam to do the same. It was the fastest he had moved since they'd beaten Lucifer the week before.

"All of the victims were young—the oldest one was twenty-four—women in the Winston-Salem area. All of them were students at Wake Forest University; all of them had red hair. Four out of the five had alcohol in their systems, but it wasn't over the legal limit—"

"I know that already. Tell me about how they're dying."

"I don't know. I mean, obviously, they're getting sick. They've all been admitted within twelve hours with a high fever. It's like the fever is frying their brains, and they've all been dead within ninety-six hours of the attack. The doctors suspected an infection or virus, but they haven't been able to nail down an exact one."

"Alright. When was the last attack?" Dean asked, eyeing the speedometer carefully. They had left Lawrence nine hours ago, and had been pushing ninety-five on any road where it wasn't immediately life threatening to do so. According to Sam's directions, it should have taken them sixteen hours to get to Winston-Salem. At this rate, they would be there within the next hour and a half.

Sam glanced at his cell phone. "Nineteen hours ago. If this girl is following the same pattern that the others are following—"

"She'll already be sick. She's the newest one. Let's start there. What do we know?"

"I don't have as much information on this one. All I've got is her statement and the crime scene photos."

"Well then maybe you should tell me what you _do _know," Dean snapped. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he was sorry for them.

Sam knew a lot about his brother, but then, so did Dean. Dean knew that even though his brother had professed to be long past wanting a normal life with a house and a white picket fence in the suburbs—complete with a wife and 2.3 kids—he had a reason for it. Dean was the king of low self-esteem, yes, but Sam had some of his own. Sam would never have the white picket fence life because he would spend the rest of his life trying to overcome his destiny. He was the one that was destined to have Lucifer wear him to the prom; he was the one that was chosen by a demon to help end the world, and even though he hadn't—even though he had helped save the world more times than anyone could ever guess—he would spend the rest of his life trying do as many kind deeds as he could to make up for his destiny.

So, no, he didn't really need his brother snapping at him.

"The victim was Charlotte Preston, age twenty. She went out to a bar with her friends, got home around one o'clock and was attacked shortly afterwards. She's got red hair and green eyes like all the others. She said she saw the fiery light outside her window, felt someone sitting on her chest. Tried to get away, but she couldn't."

"Blood alcohol level?"

"Nothing. She was the designated driver for her some other friends."

"Alright. When we get there, you take talk to the girl. I'll head to the bar and see what I can find."

For the next hour and seventeen minutes, Sam looked over the files he had and took note of anything interesting. He kept Dean up to date on the little things he noticed; normally, Dean wouldn't be interested in all the gory little medical details. This time, he ate them up. Every detail that Sam threw at him, he devoured and committed completely to memory.

"Let me know what you find out," Dean told Sam as he dropped him off at the hospital.

"Yeah. I'll meet you at the motel."

After traveling on the road for the many years that they had, they knew their way around choosing skeezy motels. There was one right off the interstate that was everything they were looking for: sketchy enough to keep away any real decent clientele, but safe enough that they didn't have to worry about their room being broken into while they weren't there. Sam knew that Dean had the same little motel in mind and that they really didn't need to spell it out for each other.

Sam had barely set foot out of the car when the Impala peeled away, tires squealing, leaving the younger Winchester staring at tail lights and wondering what the hell was going on.

As soon as Sam was out of the car, Dean whipped out his phone and dialed Bobby. Before the older man even had a chance to ask questions, Dean was already giving him orders.

"Bobby, we're working at case in Winston-Salem, at Wake Forest. The name is Cason Butler. I need you to find me anything and everything that you can find about her and call me back."

"Dean, what's this for—"

But it was too late. Dean had already hung up.

Dean pulled up in front of the bar where Charlotte Preston had spent the evening before her attack four minutes later. It wasn't the hole-in-the-wall type of dive that he was used to sitting in, the type where he could pick up a date for the evening and impress her with bad booze. Instead, it was respectable. Not the kind of place where women would wear cocktail dresses and men would wear a coat and tie, but it was nice enough. Somewhere where friends could go to have a drink, or maybe where co-workers could go get a casual drink after work.

As he pushed the door open, he eyes the bar staff. There's more than one bartender on duty, and they're all wearing button down shirts in various colors paired with dark blue jeans. He knows that sometimes places like this one will have rotations so that their staff don't get burned out, but he's also willing to bet that there's at least one person who was working last night. He took a seat at the bar to wait for a bartender to take his order. He didn't have to wait long.

"You look like you've had a long day. I'm betting you're a whiskey man."

The voice was young and female with just the right edge of lightness. It was the kind of tone that would make a desperate man spill all his secrets and make a teetotaler buy a drink. The voice was familiar—he had been reliving it over and over again in his head for the past seven months.

He studied the bartender that had spoken. She was young—twenty-four to be exact—but she handled herself like someone older. Her red hair was pulled back out of her face in a ponytail, but he still found himself fascinated by the way it swished around her neck. The green button down that she was wearing brought out her eyes—and the makeup helped a little bit—and she looked beautiful.

She didn't look the same as she had the last time he'd seen her, but she was just as beautiful. The tired circles that he had seen under her eyes last time were gone; she didn't have the worry lines around her mouth. The determined glint he had seen in her eyes was now playful. But her smile was the same. It was still a smile that could turn razor sharp in a minute or that could charm the birds from their nests.

"Are you alright?" she asked when he didn't answer her.

"I'm doing just fine. I'm Dean," he answered, extending his hand.

"And do you have a last name, Dean?"

"Winchester. Dean Winchester."

"Well, it's nice to meet you Dean Winchester. I'm Cason. Cason Butler," she said, shaking his hand. When her fingers touched his, he was struck by how very _familiar _it felt. She held on for a long time and didn't let go. When she finally did release his hand, she kept staring at him.

"It's nice to meet you too, Cason. I'm wondering if you could help me out. I'm with the FBI, and we're investigating the recent string of sexual assaults in the area. I was wondering if you could find me someone who was working here last night."

"I'll have to pull up a schedule to get you the full list, but I was head bartender last night. What can I help you with?"

He pulled a photo of Charlotte Preston out of his pocket. "Do you know this woman?"

"Yeah. That's Charlie. She's in here all the time. She's not old enough to drink yet, so we legally probably shouldn't be letting her in here, but she never tries to buy booze. She's just the designated driver for her friends. Why? Did something happen to Charlie?"

He took a deep breath and tried to focus on how grateful he was that she was safe. Even if he had to deliver bad news for the rest of his life, at least she would be safe.

"Early this morning, Charlie was attacked and sexually assaulted in her home. I'm investigating the case."

He wasn't sure what he was expecting, but it wasn't what he got. Maybe he should have known better than to expect tears and hysterics—yeah, he did know better than to expect tears and hysterics—but he was still shocked when she started swearing a blue streak. Apparently, the other patrons of the bar were, too, because they all started to give them strange and disapproving looks.

"Is she…okay? I mean, obviously after something like that, 'okay' is a relative term, I guess. Is she…?"

"She was admitted to the hospital several hours ago with a high fever. Otherwise, she seems to be physically alright."

"Shit. Fuck. That couldn't have happened to…Charlie's a good kid, you know? She keeps herself together, doesn't do drugs. Hell, she doesn't even drink yet. Seems too damn unfair that shit like this has to happen to a good person like her."

"A good kid? You can't be that much older than her," Dean said.

Cason smiled sadly. "Four years. Charlie has a good head on her shoulders, but she isn't…she isn't a worldly woman, if you know what I mean. She likes to think that everyone is as good as she is, which means that sometimes she puts blinders on to the things she doesn't want to see."

"Did she put blinders on about any of the people she hangs out with?"

"No. They're a solid group. Maybe one or two that drink a little much, but she's the type to take care of them and hope that they grow out of it. Confrontation isn't really her thing."

"Did you notice anyone hanging around that doesn't usually hang around with her? Anyone trying to buy her drinks?" Dean asked.

Cason shook her head. "No. I mean, not anyone unusual. There's this guy—Miles—who always tries to buy her a drink, but she always turns him down. She's pretty polite about it, too, and he always takes it like a champ. I think it's more of a game now than anything. Truthfully, though, when she's old enough to drink, I think she'll accept it," she explained. Eyeing a patron at the end of the bar, she flagged down one of the passing staff. "Hey, I'm cutting Frank off. He's already had one too many. If he wants anything, tell him he can have water and if he doesn't like it, he can take it up with me."

He wondered what she would say if she knew that two of the previous victims were dead and that the other two were well on their way to joining them. She wasn't an idiot—though he had known that going in—and would probably pick up on the pattern pretty quickly. After hearing what she had to say about Charlie, he knew that she would be upset.

"You're pretty observant," he commented, eyeing the man at the end of the bar. He was a short, stocky man in his late twenties, and unless he had been looking closely, Dean never would have noticed that he was drunk. Dean also wouldn't have noticed that he'd seen this guy before—very shortly before he'd seen Cason last time.

"I've worked here since I was old enough to tend bar. I should know everyone at this point. Do you have any more questions for me?" she asked.

"Yeah," he answered, though his tone said that they had nothing to do with his investigation. "In the past two weeks, five young women with red hair—"

"—Have been raped, and you want to know why I haven't dyed my hair," she finished for him.

"Something like that, yeah."

"I'm not going to let some sick son of a bitch change me. From what I've read, a lot of rapists that follow a pattern want their victims to be afraid, and I refuse to let him make me afraid."

"Even if it means putting yourself at risk?"

She grinned wickedly. "I've taken some precautions to lessen the risk. My dad bought me a pistol for my—"

"Twenty-first birthday," he finished, before he could stop himself.

She stared at him. "How did you know that?"

"That's the legal age that you can buy handgun ammunition in the state of North Carolina. Safe guess," he said with a grin, trying to seem less like a stalker. "You realize that you're not supposed to have guns in a bar, right?"

She grinned. "Amongst us female staff, we have a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy. It works wonderfully. Now, if you don't have any more questions about your case, I really should get back to work."

"Yeah, of course. Thank you for your help."

"If you have any more questions, I'll be here." She started to wipe down the bar as he walked away. She called after him. "Hey, you gonna have that shot?"

He turned back to see her holding up a shot of whiskey.

"What makes you think I want a shot?"

"You look like someone beat you like a red-headed stepchild. You want a drink, but you don't have time to sit in a bar and sip it, so you're going to have to make do with a shot."

He took the shot from her hand and tossed it back. It was smooth on the way down and warmed him to his toes, definitely higher quality than he was used to drinking. He eyed the top shelf behind the bar and saw several bottles of bourbon whiskey that would have made even the best critic proud.

"What is this?"

"Knob Creek. Kentucky bourbon whiskey. 100 proof. Catch the asshole who hurt Charlie, and you can have another one, on the house."

He nodded as he left the bar. As he walked to the car, he contemplated sitting in it and waiting until the bar closed at two before heading back to the motel. Then he remembered that Sam was waiting on him and that the faster he solved this case, the faster he could guarantee that Cason would be safe. Besides, he knew a thing or two about her self-defense abilities, which were nothing to laugh at.

Sam's expression as he saw his brother walk through the door of their motel room was nothing to laugh at, either. Normally, Dean would brush it off as a serious case of bitch-face. This time, though, he was holding a picture of Cason in his hand, complete with several sheets of paper.

"You want to tell me what this is about?" Sam asked.

"How'd you get—"

"When you called Bobby, he got to looking. Since we work our cases together—or, we used to, anyway—he sent the information to me. Now, who is this girl, Dean?"

"Her name came up in the investigation—"

"You called Bobby before you even went to the bar. I'm not stupid, Dean. Ever since you got back from your little stroll down futuristic lane, you've been off. I don't know what you saw in the future, since you don't want to tell me everything, but I'm smart enough to know that it has something to do with this girl. You've been saying her name in your sleep," Sam said.

"What?"

"After we beat Lucifer…you were saying her name in your sleep. So tell me, who is this girl, and what's so important about her that you drop everything and go running half way across the country?"


	2. Late Night Conversations

**Author's Note: Thank you so much to everyone who read and reviewed. It was a great start to this project, and I feel really good about the response I've gotten. Y'all are awesome. I hope you enjoy this chapter, and that you get some questions answered. If you're reading this and you haven't read "The World As We Know It" and you have any questions, just let me know and I'll try to answer them for you. Please review!**

* * *

><p>Dean froze, completely at a loss for words. He was used to thinking on his feet, to knowing exactly what to say to make someone buy whatever story he was selling, but when it came to his brother, he had nothing to say. Since his return from 2014, he had gone out of his way to make sure that his brother didn't know about anything that didn't directly relate to fighting Lucifer, and had thought that he was successful.<p>

"What did he tell you?" Dean asked quietly, finally giving in to the realization that there was no way around the question.

"He told me that Cason Butler is a twenty-four year graduate student at Wake Forest University. Apparently, she was an English major with a double minor in secondary education and religion. Now she's working on a master's. in religious texts—"

That part caught Dean off guard. "A master's in religious texts?"

"Yeah. Why, was that not what you were expecting?" Truthfully, that wasn't what he was expecting, but he let his brother continue. "Her parents are Scott and Katherine Butler, both still alive and kicking in Greenville, South Carolina. I can keep going or is that enough for you?" Sam asked, reading off the sheet of notes in front of him.

"Keep going."

"Fine. Cason Butler has no criminal record, nor has her name come up in connection with any other cases that might be our kind of case. I can tell you that she's the bartender at the bar where Charlotte Preston spent the last night before her attack. That's what Bobby found. He said that he would keep digging and then e-mail me a full dossier. After a quick search on the school website, I was able to find out that she is the head of the English Students Alliance. She's also active in the Wake Forest Catholic Community, and organizes debates for the religion department."

"She's a busy woman," Dean commented, impressed. He remembered that she was a brilliant woman, and great with languages, but hearing the details of it was still very impressive.

"She's also a redhead. She fits our rapists profile to the tee."

"Where did you find a picture?"

"Well, I found one online on the English Students Alliance website, but I've also seen the one that you keep in your pocket."

There were many times that Dean found himself completely in awe of the things that his brother could do, but this moment took the cake. He had made sure to guard that picture with his life; he slept with it under his pillow—right next to his Colt 1911—and woke every morning with his hand curled around it. Despite his terrible habit of sending receipts and various other things that might be in his pockets through the laundry, that had never happened to this picture. He even made sure to take it into the bathroom with him while he was showering so that Sam wouldn't find it.

"How did you—"

"Find the picture? It was a few weeks back. You were unconscious after I stitched you up and your phone started ringing. It was in your coat pocket with the picture. Funny thing is, Bobby and I haven't found anything about her having a kid," Sam said quietly, his displeasure obvious in his voice.

The remark caused a tightness in Dean's chest as memories rolled over him.

_He was tucked into the backseat of the Jeep, a thick, wool blanket pulled over him to hide him from sight. As he sat and waited for the rest of the team—namely Cason and his future self—to get moving, he contemplated what she had told him in their earlier conversation. _

_ Kendel. He had a little girl named Kendel. He had yet to catch a glimpse of the child, but he already felt tenderness towards her based solely on the way that her mother had talked about her. There was a fierce protectiveness about Cason when he had told him about Kendel, like she was daring him not to love her daughter. And yet, he had seen the softness in her as she thought of her daughter. How could he not love a little girl that inspired that in a woman like Cason?_

_ And what a woman she was. She had answered all of his questions boldly and without flinching, even when he had asked about Kendel's biological father. He heard her words echoing over and over in his mind. _

_ "After he had his way with me, to put it delicately," she had said. Ryan Hadley, she had said his name was. Ryan Hadley had somehow managed to get a drop on this warrior woman and had raped her; she hadn't let that break her. Instead, she took the gift of her daughter and turned her life into something beautiful in the middle of the end of the world. _

_ When she had visited him earlier, he had promised to change the world, to stop this croatoan-ravaged future from happening. His future self had filled him in on how things were supposed to go, but he wasn't sold on it. There was too much guesswork, too much that could go wrong, and from the way that they were talking, he could tell that they both knew it. _

_ "Mommy and Daddy have to go on a mission. You're going to stay with Mrs. Mel and Mr. Yaeger," Cason was explaining outside the Jeep. _

_ "You're going to have a good time with them," he heard his future self say. _

_ Dean knew that if he peeked over the seat, he would catch a glimpse of that little girl, and he couldn't resist the temptation. Very quietly, he pushed a corner of the blanket off of his head and looked out the window. _

_ His future patchwork family was standing beside the car. He could see his future self standing there, a little girl in his arms. She had a head full of bouncy red curls and chubby cheeks that were begging to be pinched. Her eyes were wide and filled with tears as she clung to his future self, begging them not to go. _

_ "I don't want you to go," she begged, hugging him tighter. _

_ "Sweetheart, we have to go. I don't want to, but sometimes…sometimes we have to do things that we don't want to do. But that doesn't mean that we love you any less, okay? Your father and I love you very, very much. More than anything else in the world_," _Cason told her. _

_ "Rots and rots?" Kendel asked, tears streaming down her cheeks. _

_ "Rots and rots," he answered, kissing her lightly on the forehead. "Can I get a good luck kiss from my girl?" She nodded and kissed her father on the cheek. "Give your mom one, too." She kissed her mom and clung to her dad, not wanting to let him go. Watching the scene, Dean felt a pang in his chest. _

_ "I don't want you to go…"_

A tightness rose in his throat as he thought about Kendel begging her parents not to leave her. Of course, the fact that he had been holding her as she said those goodbyes made it all the more heart-wrenching for him to think about. It took him several moments and several deep breaths before he was able to speak again.

"She doesn't have a daughter."

Sam stared at him long and hard, clearly expecting an explanation. Dean sighed and stared at his hands, wondering if there was any way for him to get out of this without spilling his guts. Seeing her just an hour ago had shaken him up, and he still wasn't ready to share his feelings, not after he had fought so hard to keep them locked up.

"When Zachariah sent me to the future, Cason was my second-in-command. The other me, I mean. The future me. She had a little girl."

That was all he could bring himself to say, and thankfully, Sam didn't push it. He had known his brother long enough to know exactly what that look in Dean's eyes meant. It was the kind of look that said it hurt too damn much to talk about, and that's all she wrote. He put a hand on his brother's shoulder and didn't speak, didn't ask for any further clarification. Yeah, he still didn't know everything, but his brother's reactions were enough to tell him everything.

"Well, I went to talk to Charlotte Preston. She pretty much told me exactly the same thing that she told police. She was getting into bed, saw the bright light and then knew there was someone in the room with her. The only thing that differs from the other reports is that she said she heard a loud noise outside her window, like a bird's call," Sam said.

"A bird call?"

"That's what she said. I've got the computer searching for any connection between the fire and the bird call. I also found that Charlotte Preston wasn't the only one who was at that bar the night she was attacked. Three of the five were there before they were attacked, and the other two worked there. They were attacked on their night off."

"Shit. How come we didn't see it before?"

"No one put it in each of the files. I didn't find out until I asked the officer in charge, and that was the first time he had thought about it."

"Damnit…okay. We've got to head back to the bar tomorrow—"

"Yeah, we've got to look at all the staff. There's a strong possibility that it could be one of the people who works there, or hangs out there—"

"She works there, Sam."

Sam didn't bother to ask who he was talking about; after the conversation they just had, he already knew. He also knew that it would be pointless to suggest that his brother go to sleep, because there was no way in hell that was going to happen.

"She fits the pattern of victims, doesn't she?" Sam asked, glancing at the picture of her from the ESA website.

"Yeah. And she's head bartender at the bar where all of our victims have worked. She's on duty right now. The bar closes at two."

"And you want to stake out the bar until the window of opportunity passes?"

"Damn right. You coming with me?"

Sam grabbed his jacket and the files and headed out the door. Ten minutes later, they were sitting outside the bar, watching a slew of people come and go. Now that it was later, the rougher crowd had shown up and when they left, they weren't exactly in a good way. When closing time finally rolled around, the drunks were exiting in droves. A small armada of taxis pulled up in front of the bar, where Cason was waiting to put her drunken clientele safely inside.

"That's her?" Sam asked quietly, pointing at Cason.

"Yeah, that's her."

"God, she's just his type. She's…small, red-haired. Does she have—"

"Green eyes? Yeah, she does."

"And don't look now, but she's is headed right for us," Sam murmured, suddenly very interested in the file in his lap.

A few seconds later, there was a tapping at Sam's window. Not surprisingly, Cason was standing outside the car, looking in. Sam quickly rolled down the window.

"Sorry guys, bar's closed. We're open from 4 PM to 2 AM, if you want to come back tomorrow—"

"Hey, Miss Butler," Dean said, leaning across the seat so that she could see his face.

"Agent Winchester," she answered, an edge of worry in her voice. "What are you doing here?"

He sighed. "Can we talk?"

"Um…yeah, sure. I haven't locked up yet. Come on in."

They quickly climbed out of the car and followed her into the bar. In the light of the streetlamps, Dean could see the outline of a gun tucked into the waistband at the back of her pants. It should have made him feel better about her security, but how many women wore their pistols tucked into the back of their pajamas?

Cason immediately took her place behind the bar and began cleaning up, while Dean and Sam sat at barstools on the other side of the bar. Sam took a moment to study the woman that had somehow managed to bewitch his brother—not literally, of course. She moved with confidence around the room, owning anything and everything she touched.

"I'm Cason Butler," she said, extending her hand to Sam. "Though I'm sure you already knew that."

"I'm R—"

"This is my brother and my partner, Sam Winchester," Dean explained, quickly cutting off his brother. Cason eyed them curiously, but she let the lapse go. As she turned her back to put up a bottle of bourbon, Sam gave Dean the "what the hell are you doing giving her our real names" look.

"Brothers and partners, huh? I bet that makes for interesting Sunday dinners."

"If we had Sunday dinners, yeah," Dean answered with a small grin.

"You realize that there is a serial rapist on the loose, right?" Sam commented dryly. "And that you fit his profile to a tee?"

"I thought I already went over this with your brother. I'm not letting him affect me. It's my life, and I'll live it how I please. Now, I'm sure that you didn't come to hang out and ask me the same questions that your brother did earlier."

"Did you know that all of the victims have either worked here or spent the evening before their attack here?" Sam asked.

"I knew about Katherine and Lindsey. Your brother told me about Charlie earlier this evening. I took more precautions after Katherine was attacked and we keep more security on staff. We've tried to be more cautious about how many drinks we're serving and who we're serving them to. No one had mentioned it being a pattern, and I didn't really think about it because we're a pretty popular bar. We've had to turn people away before because we're overcrowded," she answered quietly.

"I saw you calling taxis for some of your patrons. Is that something you usually do?"

"When I first started working here, not so much. I mean, we would if someone was really bad off, but mostly we would just try to put them on a bus or call someone to come get them. But when Boston took over a year ago, we started cleaning up a little more: calling taxis, more security cameras, more lights in the parking lot."

"Boston?" Dean asked as Sam jotted the name down in his little notebook.

"His real name is Stephen Philips. He's originally from Boston, and he's got the accent to show for it. He's usually around and in the house from when we open at four until nine or ten on Mondays, Wednesday, and every other Friday," she explained as she wiped down the counter and scraped some trash into a bucket.

"That's a weird schedule."

"He owns another bar in Greensboro, so he spends time there, too. I manage the bar when he's not here and close on nights when I work."

"And you're not the least bit worried for your own safety?" Sam asked skeptically.

"I didn't say that I wasn't worried," she said, putting her pistol on the bar. "I said that I wasn't going to let him—whoever he may be—change my routine. I've just taken some safety precautions."

"Do you mind if we come in tomorrow night and have a look around?"

"It's fine with me. Boston will be in tomorrow, so you can talk to him if you'd like. Or I can give you his card."

"Can I have one of his cards?" Dean asked. She nodded and grabbed one of his cards off of the counter.

"Is there any way we can have access to your security footage?" Sam said, eyeing one of the cameras mounted in the corner.

"The police came in shortly after you left and took the footage from yesterday. They've also got the stuff from Katherine's attack. Lindsey was attacked on her night off, so we don't have any useful footage."

"How about footage from the night before last, and then the day before and of Lindsey's attack? Can we have that?" Sam asked, his mind working in overtime.

Cason seemed to think about it for a minute before throwing caution to the wind. "What the hell? If Boston doesn't like it, he can go to hell. If it could help catch this son of a bitch, you can have it. You'll just get a warrant anyway. I'll grab it for you." She headed into one of the back rooms, leaving Sam and Dean alone at the bar.

"Whatever play you're planning on making, you do realize that it could blow up in your face, right?" Sam said to his brother as soon as Cason was gone.

"I'm not going to make a move on her, Sam. Jesus," Dean snapped back.

"Are you kidding me? You were grinning at her and turning on the charm!"

"I am not!"

"You don't even realize that you're doing it, do you?"

"Sam, I just want to keep her safe, okay? She's stubborn as hell and it's going to get her killed if she's not careful," he answered quietly. The look Sam gave him showed just how much he didn't believe him, but neither of them said anything.

When Cason returned, she finally broke the silence. "Here you go. This should be everything that you're looking for. Is there anything else you need?"

"No, that should be everything," Dean replied. "If we need anything else—"

"You know where to find me. Now, since we're done, I'm heading home," she finished for him.

"Let me walk you to your car," Dean offered. Cason smiled and let him walk her across the parking lot. The lights were on, but her car was parked in the back of the lot to make room for customers to park closer to the building.

"_That's _your car?"

Cason grinned. "That's my baby," she said as they approached her cherry red 1965 Mustang. "He's probably not the most practical with gas prices being what they are, but I love him. It was a project for me and my dad to work on when I was in high school."

"It's nice. The trunk's a bit small—"

"What are you keeping in your trunk? It's plenty big," she answered. As they got closer to the car, a look of shock and disbelief came over her face as she noticed that all four of her tires were flat. "Son of a _bitch!_ That's going to bend the rims!"

Immediately, Dean knelt beside the car and studied the tires. They hadn't been obviously torn open, but there were several small slashes. He noticed that she had several nails in the tire.

"This wasn't an accident," he told her. When he looked back at her over his shoulder, she already had her pistol out and at the ready. Clearly, she agreed with him.

"Did they have to ruin my tires and my rims? Whatever happened to the good ole' lurk-in-the-shadows-and-knock-her-on-the-head technique?" she quipped, an edge of anger in her voice, though Dean could tell that it was to cover her fear. He knew better than anyone that it was easier to be angry than afraid.

"He wants you conscious."

"What?"

"All the victims of this guy have been awake when they were attacked. He wants you scared," Dean said quietly, pulling his gun as well.

"Fantastic." She quickly pulled out her phone and called the police department. Normally, she would be more annoyed than worried, but with the way things had been going for red-headed women, she was feeling more cautious than usual.

The police sent a squad car out to the bar to look around and take pictures; the entire time, Dean and Sam stayed with Cason—not that they she needed them for moral support. She handled the questions with patience and confidence. No, she didn't have any enemies that would do this to her car. No, she hadn't noticed anyone out of place at the bar tonight. Yes, she knew of the recent rash of sexual assaults against women fitting her physical description.

By the time the police were finished with their questions, it was after four o'clock in the morning.

"Would you like a ride home?" one of the police officers asked her quietly. She glanced at Dean, who nodded quietly.

"No, that won't be necessary. Thank you, though," she whispered.

Dean led her to the Impala, where Sam was waiting for them. There were dark circles beneath his eyes—Dean and Cason had some to match. They were all exhausted, and it was written all over their faces.

"Nice car," Cason said quietly as she listened to the engine roar.

"Let me tell you about it when you'll actually remember it. Where to?"

"I'm not going back to my apartment. There's a hotel on University Parkway. I'll stay there for the night and go home in the morning."

Sam gives Dean a pointed look, just in case his older brother had forgotten that this was the hotel where they were staying. Dean hadn't forgotten, but having her that close to them was not bothering him the way it was his brother. Neither brother said a word to Cason until after they got her checked in.

"This one's yours," Sam whispered, before heading back to their room, leaving Dean and Cason alone. They walked to her room in silence.

"If you need anything, Sam and I are in a room downstairs. Room 123."

She raised her eyebrows skeptically. "You weren't going to tell me that this was your hotel until after I checked in?"

"Maybe I should remind you that you picked the hotel?" Cason shrugged. "And I figure that it can't hurt for you to be close to us. Maybe when he sees how close you are to us, he'll be less likely to try to attack you."

She grinned, though her exhaustion made it look more like a grimace. "Soon you'll be telling me that you'll be able to keep me safer if you're in my room."

The words hit Dean hard as he remembered part of the conversation he had had with her future self, and the grin was gone from his face. Yeah, he wanted her. He had history with her…a future with her? It was all too complicated for him to think about. But however he looked at it, he knew things about her that she didn't know that he knew, and that put them on uneven footing. He had an advantage over her that he wouldn't ever act on.

"I'll never try to trick you into doing something you don't want to do," he said quietly. She stared at him to a long moment, unsure of why their conversation had taken a turn for the serious. She could see the tension in his body, but didn't understand it. But whatever the reason for it, his words were odd, but comforting.

When she didn't answer, he continued, "If anything seems out of the ordinary, we're right downstairs. Don't hesitate to call."

"Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you for everything."

"Anytime."


	3. Too Real

**Author's Note: So, here's another chapter. Thank you to everyone who read and reviewed! Your support has been fantastic! Remember, feedback is a writer's best friend. Let me know what's working, what isn't and any thoughts you have. Enjoy, and please review!**

* * *

><p>Cason rose early, not because she really wanted to or because it was a habit, but rather because she couldn't sleep. She dozed fitfully until nearly eight o'clock before finally giving up on getting any real sleep. After realizing that a good, deep slumber was never going to come, she rose from the bed and headed into the bathroom to take a shower. She took her pistol with her.<p>

The only window in the room was in the bedroom, so she didn't have to worry about the safety precautions of someone creeping into her bathroom while she showered. It had been thoughts of something creeping in through her window that had caused her uneasy sleep, and after seeing what had happened to her tires the night before, she couldn't chase the idea of being attacked out of her mind. Despite the lack of windows in her bathroom, she still kept the pistol on the back of the toilet—well within arm's reach.

It was only after she got out of the shower and started thinking about everything that she didn't have—her school books, another change of clothes, an extra magazine for her gun, toothpaste—that she began to be thankful for her large, junk-filled purse. She pulled her small for-emergencies-only kit out of her purse; it contained a small hairbrush, dental floss, several band-aids, an alcohol swab, spearmint gum, a phone charger, and a pair of clean underwear. She brushed her hair and dried it with the cheap motel hair dryer before redressing in her clothes from the day before.

"Thank you, Mom," she whispered to no one as she repacked her emergency kit. Her first class was at ten, but showing up to a religion class wearing her clothes from the day before is a good way to cause an exponential increase in gossip. It was bad enough having to spend time in the religion department while working in a bar. Oh the debates that had spawned.

Without a car, she was going to need someone to take her home. Her independent streak screamed at her to call a taxi, but her common sense said that probably wasn't her best plan of action. Reluctantly, she locked her door behind her and headed downstairs to room 123.

She had barely knocked on the door before it was opening, a bleary-eyed and exhausted-looking Dean standing in the doorway. He opened the door wide and quickly ushered her inside, glancing nervously down the hall. Inside the room, both of the brothers looked normal—far more normal than they were. Their FBI suits were hanging in the closet, their fake IDs safely hidden in the fake Bible in the bedside table drawer. They were both looking rumpled, but that was to be expected after the night they'd had.

"Is everything okay?" Dean asked immediately.

"Not really. I need to get home, pack a bag, get my school stuff, and get to class in the span of…forty-five minutes," she answered, glancing at the clock. "And I don't have a car. I was going to call a taxi, but if someone really, truly is gunning for me, it might be safer to have a more legitimate escort."

"I can take you."

"All I really need is for you to take me home and drop me off at school. I can get one of my coworkers to pick me up on the way in this afternoon."

"And your car?"

"I can call someone to come and put the tires on if the rims aren't too terribly bent out of shape."

Throughout the entire conversation, Sam stood at the vanity. Neither Dean nor Cason was paying much attention to him, because if they had been, they would have noticed that he was listening in rather than actually washing his face or brushing his teeth. He could tell from her posture—the way that she was rocking back on her heels, and the way that she was pulling at the edge of her shirtsleeves—that she was nervous. He could also tell that she was reluctant as hell to be there. Before he could say anything, Dean spoke for them.

"You're going to go to work?"

"I should be safe enough in the actual bar while there are other people there. I'll just have someone stay with me to close up so that I'm not alone."

Dean sighed in frustration. "Well, at least you have enough sense to not be alone."

"I have plenty of sense, thank you," she said sharply, taking offense at his implication.

"That's not what I meant," Dean said quickly, trying to cover his mistake. "It's just good that you're…you know, thinking about your—"

"I know what you meant. Now, are you going to give me a ride or not?"

"Yeah, I'll do it. Let me grab some clothes real quick."

Dean was dressed ready to go in four minutes, though the quick splash of cold water on his face hadn't quite been enough to wipe the exhaustion off his face. He grabbed the keys and nodded at Sam, who was just staring after them, not bothering to say anything.

The ride to Cason's apartment was quiet, with Dean's classic rock playing softly in the background. Dean spent the ride very carefully watching the road and trying to watch Cason and hoping that she didn't notice that he was watching. She spent the ride texting and going over schedules on her phone.

Halfway there, she got a phone call. From what Dean could hear, it wasn't a good phone call, either.

"Sarah, I understand that you're worried, but we're taking plenty of precautions. You know that David is more than willing to walk you to your car." She was silent, listening to the person—Sarah—on the other end of the line, and getting more and more agitated the more she heard. "What do you mean a pattern?"

Dean could hear the voice on the other end of the line rising, getting more and more shrill the longer the conversation went on. Cason's irritation was obviously increasing, though her face was paling.

"Newspaper? That's fantastic. Just great. Okay, look, I've got to get in touch with Boston and we'll figure out where we're going from there. Keep your phone on you and I'll keep you posted."

"What's up?" Dean asked as she hung up her phone.

"Apparently, we made the front page of the paper. Now all of my staff is afraid to come into work and you can guaran-damn-tee that our business is going to take a hit until this guy is caught. That's fantastic. I should have a newspaper waiting in my apartment when we get there, so I can do damage control."

When they pulled up to her building, Cason took off inside and up the stairs, leaving Dean several steps behind and struggling to keep up with her. When they finally reached her door—on the top floor, corner unit—Dean caught his breath and managed to talk her into letting him go in the door first. He did a quick sweep of the apartment—a simple one bedroom, one bath and a decent sized combined kitchen and living room. It was furnished with well-worn furniture that was at one time probably the gem of someone's garage sale. The main focal point of the room was a television framed on either side by two large bookshelves. He did a quick scan of the apartment, weapon drawn, and came up clean. It still didn't stop him from standing guard in the doorway of her room while she packed a bag.

If he found her living room entertaining, her bedroom was more interesting by far. It was painted in a warm red with a bedspread of purples and reds and rich golds. There were more bookshelves crammed full of academic texts, mixed with several Agatha Christie novels and a do-it-yourself tax manual. The desk was covered in interesting trinkets and clutter from what appeared to be her next academic paper. It was a far more sensual room than he would have imagined for her.

"You don't have to stand guard, you know. I don't think that creepy rapist guy is going attack me with you in the next room," she said as she threw some clothes into a bag.

"Can't be too safe, you know."

She looked at him over her shoulder. "Are you this protective of all your potential witnesses?"

"You mean potential victims? I'm not going to play around with your life."

"I'm not going to play around with it, either. That's why I brought you with me. Now, will please grab me the Ancient Greek dictionary off the windowsill please?"

He nodded and crossed the room, grabbing the thick book off of her windowsill. Taking a quick glimpse out the window, he noticed thick, black smudges on the outside of the sill. Over Cason's complaints, he pushed open the window to take a closer look. When she saw the smudges, she stopped complaining.

"What the hell is that?" she asked, taking a closer look at them.

The smudges were thick and dark, and not smudges at all. There were burns in the brick—deep burns that turned the top layer of brick to dust. They were strangely shaped, like a capital Y with an extra prong. After looking at the other windows around and below hers, he realized that hers was the only one with the strange marks. Dean quickly pulled out his phone and took a picture of the burn marks.

"It's a burn mark," he answered.

"Well no shit, but what's it doing outside my window?"

"I don't know. I'll find out." With the click of a button, he sent the picture to Sam so that he could get started analyzing it.

"Okay. Is there anything else that you need to look at while you're here?"

"I'll get back to you on that. Do you have everything you need? You might not be able to come back for a while, so you should make sure that you've got enough clothes for a week or so."

"Yeah, I got it. Let's go." And then they were in the car again, headed back towards the university, Cason looking over the newspaper. Halfway through the first paragraph, her face grew even paler than it had been when she spoke to her employee earlier.

"Charlie's sick?" she whispered. "Charlie's sick and all the others are dead?"

"Yeah," he said, trying to be as gentle as he could about it.

"That's not normal. You don't die in four days after getting…after getting raped. That's not normal."

"No, no it's not."

"Shit. Shit. Shit!" Cason's hands were shaking as she tried to type an email on her phone. "Okay. You're investigating this. You're going to find out why this is happening?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I will."

"We have to save Charlie."

"I will."

"I didn't say _you _have to save Charlie. I said _we._"

Dean didn't have time to argue before both of their phones started ringing and they were lost in their separate conversations. Cason and her boss—Boston—discussed the pros and cons of keeping the bar open for the night. Sam was calling to get more details on the strange burns that were outside Cason's window. As soon as they hung up, they both turned right around and began to make other phone calls. Cason was still talking as she got out of the car and started her trek across campus.

Dean watched her until she was out of sight and then began his drive back to the motel to pick up Sam, talking to Bobby all the way there. He was desperate for any idea of what could be doing this to these women.

"Do you have anything for me, Bobby?" he asked, a slightly desperate edge in his voice.

"Not much. Sam thinks it looks like some kind of claw, so I'm double checking that. But based on what you've told me, if this thing is raping the women, and then killing them, I'm betting it's some form of incubus."

"An incubus? A lust demon?"

"They aren't demons exactly. They don't possess people's bodies. They take on the form of a man when they rape women and then they slowly feed off their life energy. Eventually, it drains them dry and kills them."

"Okay, well how do you kill it?"

"I'm still looking. There's different types of incubi, and I'm still trying to figure out what you've got."

"Well, soon rather than later would be best, Bobby," Dean said, his voice a little harsher than he had intended.

"I'm doing my best here."

"I know. I'm sorry. Just let me know as soon as you find anything."

It didn't take him long to get back to the motel, where Sam had already pulled out their notes on the various different incubi that he had found information on. It was all the stuff that they had to keep hidden when there was the risk that Cason could come knocking at any minute.

"You talked to Bobby?" Dean asked.

"Yeah, and I've got more information on incubi than we could possibly need. Now it's a matter of wading through it all and figuring out what the hell we can use and what we can't. And we need to hurry up. Charlotte Preston is running out of time."

"We might have another problem."

Sam sighed. "Such as?"

"Cason is starting to realize that this case is…not normal. And she wants to help investigate."

"You'll have to keep her from doing that, then," Sam answered. "She's going to get herself killed looking into things she's not supposed to."

"Well, let's find this thing and kill it and then we won't have a problem. And I'm betting that if we were to go to all the other victim's houses that they would have the same strange markings around their windows. Link this to our lust demon, and we've got him."

They sat in the room, running through the hundred or so pages of notes that Sam had made in the time since they had started working the case. It was arduous and boring and usually the kind of work that Dean would complain about, but he didn't seem to mind. Instead, he read through everything, taking note of every single detail that could be important to the case.

"Did you get anything out of Charlie that we could use?" Dean asked quietly.

"Charlie?"

"Charlotte Preston, the latest victim. Did you get anything out of her that would be helpful?"

Sam did a double-take over the top of his paper. "No. It was the same thing that all the others had said, and she was still very nearly hysterical. And since when did you call her Charlie?"

"That's what Cason calls her when she talks about her."

"Cason knows her? Like, personally?"

"Yeah. From the bar. They seemed pretty close from the way Cason was talking about her."

Sam sighed in frustration, glancing down at the notes. Dean glanced at his brother, trying to figure out what was wrong—well, other than the fact that they had a case and couldn't exactly figure out what the hell was going on. It only took the briefest look and then Dean knew exactly what his brother was thinking.

"No," he said, not giving his brother a chance to say anything else. "We're not getting Cason to talk to Charlie. We're not."

"Think about it, Dean! She's more likely to talk to someone that she knows, someone who isn't a big, scary man. We'll be waiting right there; it's not like she's in any real danger," Sam answered, trying to make his voice smooth and logical. "It could save that girl's life!"

"And it could end Cason's! What if this thing—"

"Dean, I don't know if you've noticed this, but Cason isn't fragile. She's a hell of a lot stronger than you're giving her credit for. Give her a chance to be strong. Let her talk to Charlotte, er, Charlie."

Dean was quiet for a long moment, staring at his brother. An aching, awkward silence fell between the two of them as Dean struggled to find the words that could describe the Cason that he remembered. He remembered her strength when he had seen her in 2014 and the conversation that he had with her then; he remembered the way that she calmly ran a bar, and the way that she calmly dealt with the realization that she was a target.

"I know how strong she is. I've seen it. I just—"

"Rather lock her up where nothing can touch her?" Sam finished for him. Dean grinned self-depreciatingly.

"I need to do something. I've been sitting here for too long," he finally said, pushing himself to his feet. "I'm going to go investigate the other houses. Look for the scorch marks around the doors and windows."

"I'll come with you."

It took the better part of the afternoon and early evening to investigate each of the homes. They didn't find anything unexpected. In each place, they found the scorch marks. Some were longer than the ones that Dean had found at Cason's place, and some were in different places, but they were all there. Beside Charlie Preston's window, near Katherine Walter's balcony doors, down the side of Lindsey Marsden's chimney. Every single house or apartment had them.

"They're clearly burn marks. I'm guessing that this means that it wasn't blown street lights that they were seeing," Sam commented.

Before Dean could answer, his phone chimed. He flipped it open and found a text message waiting.

_Bar closed. I'm at the library. Can I hitch a ride? –Cason _

"It's from Cason. They decided to close the bar for the night. She needs a ride."

"You're going to have a heart attack if we don't pick her up, so let's go," Sam answered, not bothering to think about it.

When Cason slid into the backseat of the Impala, she was still carrying her school books and her bag of clothes. She looked exhausted and it was obvious that the day had taken a toll on her. For all of her ability to be calm and controlled, she was still running on just a couple hours sleep and it had been a long day.

"Have you found anything new?" she asked immediately.

"As it turns out, the burn marks that we found outside your window this morning? They're at each of the victim's homes," Dean informed her.

"So it's a pattern? I'm not surprised. Did you know that this happened last year in Charleston, SC? Same pattern of victims and everything," she said, thrusting a stack of papers into Sam's lap.

"Where did you find this?" Sam asked, more shocked that she'd actually been looking than anything else.

"I'm a master's candidate, and I want to get my Ph.D. I know how to do research. Now, you two better get your asses moving, because Charlie doesn't have much time, according to this pattern."

Sam looked pointedly at Dean, who kept his eyes focused straight ahead on the road, trying not to look his brother in the eye.

"I spoke to Charlie yesterday," Sam finally said, despite the fact that Dean was going to give him hell for this later. "She was really nervous—"

"And couldn't give you anything useful? I'll talk to her. Let's go."

"Are you sure?" Dean asked. "She's sick. It's not how you're used to seeing your friend."

"The other option is her being dead, which isn't really my favorite. So, yeah, I'll talk to her. Let's go."

Dean headed for the hospital in a rage of squealing tires and burnt rubber. Neither Cason nor Sam seemed to notice; if they did, they didn't say anything about it. They were all too busy thinking about what was coming next; Cason was steeling herself for a conversation she didn't particularly want to have. Sam was trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle together in his mind, but none of it seemed to fit together right. Dean was mostly hoping that seeing Charlie looking like a ghost of her former self wasn't going to hurt Cason too much.

It was surprisingly easy to get in to see Charlie; all they had to do was flash their FBI badges and the doctors and nurses let them pass. Maybe Sam had paved the way by coming in yesterday. For whatever reason, no one said anything to them.

"Knock, knock," Cason said as she pushed Charlie's door open.

"Come it." The voice that answered was a hoarse croak that reminded Cason a bit of rusty door hinges. It wasn't anything like the Charlie that she was used to hearing; Charlie who had a quiet but vivacious laugh and the brightest smile she'd ever seen. Now she sounded like she was trying to be upbeat but simply didn't have the energy for it.

She looked even worse than she sounded. In the days since she had been attacked, she had lost weight. Her hair was long and limp, tangled and dull. Her green eyes that used to be bright and full of life were glazed over—probably from the morphine drip in her arm. Dark circles—darker than Cason's—had formed under her eyes and stood out scarily against her pale, pale skin. She looked impossibly small and weak.

"Hey, Charlie," Cason whispered, barely managing to keep her expression normal. The only sign of her horror at seeing her friend looking so sick was the way that she tightened her hands into fists. "I just wanted to come and see how you were doing."

"Not so great. I'm surprised the doctors didn't…make you scrub up to come in here."

"What did they say was wrong?"

"They don't know. They keep saying…that they're doing more tests, but I think they don't have a…clue."

"I'm sure they're just trying to make sure that they're giving you the right drugs," Cason answered, trying to be soothing. She reached for her friends hand, only to have her jerk it away sluggishly.

"Don't touch me. I don't want to get you sick."

"You won't get me sick. My immune system is like a large, angry rhino."

Charlie glanced at Dean and Sam, who were trying to be as unobtrusive as possible in the corner; they were failing miserably, of course. It's had to be unobtrusive and unthreatening when you're over six feet tall.

"Why are they here?" Charlie asked.

"They wanted to talk to you again. About what happened, if you're up to it."

Charlie shook her head, looking terrified all over again. "I don't want to talk to them."

"They're just trying to help you, Charlie—"

"They're big…so big…"

"Do you want to talk to someone else? You could talk to me if you want," Cason said, sitting down beside her bed. Charlie still looked terrified. "Charlie, I know you're scared. I am, too. I'm scared for you because you're sick, and I'm scared for me. Last night, someone slashed my tires so that I would be alone and helpless in the parking lot. I know how scared you are, but if you help us, we can help you. We can help catch this guy, so he can't hurt you anymore."

Charlie was quiet for a long time before she spoke. "I had just taken everyone home, and I kept feeling like someone was watching me. I remember running from my car into my building, and I got James—the night watchman—to walk me up to my apartment. I remember closing the door and locking it…"

"Did you check the windows, too?"

She nodded. "I thought I was being paranoid, but I wasn't, was I? I don't know how he got in, because I know I locked the window in my room. I know I did…"

"Do you remember anything else? Any noises or smells or anything?"

"There was a bright light outside my window. So bright, like fire. I remember a loud calling noise, like a bird. And there was a smell, like something burning. I thought maybe there had been an electrical problem and one of the pigeons that sits on the power line got shocked."

"Good! That's good. Do you remember anything else?"

"When he was…I remember that his skin felt hot. It was so, so hot. Like he had a fever or something…"

And then she was sobbing, too upset to continue. She clutched Cason's hand tightly and cried. Cason ran her fingers through Charlie's hair—again, trying to be soothing—only to find it falling out in her hands. She quickly dropped the hair on the floor behind the bed, hoping that Charlie wouldn't notice. It was several long minutes before Charlie finally stopped crying and fell asleep. The sight of her looking so weak and helpless brought tears to Cason's eyes.

"Will that help you?" she asked the brothers bitterly as she walked out of the room.

"Yeah, it will," Sam said, truly meaning it. Cason didn't seem to listen; instead, she stalked up to the nurse's station and told them about Charlie's hair. Dean ran after her, trying to catch up.

"That really will help us get him," he told her when they were alone in the elevator.

"It better." She picked at her nails and tried not to listen to the horribly boring elevator music. "It didn't seem real before now. I mean, I knew that there was someone out there doing this to women who…to women that look like me, but it hadn't really sunk in. It's too real now. I mean, Charlie's _dying _for God's sake. She's _dying._"

Dean put a hand on her shoulder and she didn't bother to move it. "Well catch him, whoever he is. I promise."

"Before it's too late for Charlie?"

He wanted to tell her that he would save her friend, that he would make everything okay and her life could go back to normal. But normalcy wasn't something that Dean Winchester had much experience with, and he had learned a long time ago not to make promises that he couldn't keep.


	4. Can I Lean on You?

**Author's note: Here is another chapter for you, and I hope you enjoy it. Thank you so much to my reviewers, and I will try to reply to your reviews. I've been pretty slack about that lately, but I will get around to it, I promise. As always, let me know what's working, what's not, what you'd like to see, etc.**

* * *

><p>They spent the next day and half making the same rotation: hotel, school, hospital, hotel, school, hospital...There was the occasional break to go to the library or get food, but most of the time, they were holed up in Cason's hotel room, pouring over the notes that were Cason-friendly. In their room, they still had their theories tacked to the walls, and Sam kept conveniently "forgetting" something so that he could run back and double check his facts.<p>

It was noon the next day when Dean finally got the phone call he had been waiting on. Cason gave him a funny look when he stepped into the bathroom, but she didn't say anything. She figured that even though she was helping with the investigation, she was still considered a witness or a potential victim and wasn't allowed to know everything.

"Please tell me you've got something," Dean said immediately. He didn't bother with a greeting, not when he was this tense.

"You're mystery rapist is a liderc," Bobby answered briskly.

"A liderc? What the hell is that?"

"It's a type of incubus. According to the lore, they're originally from Hungary and are hatched out of a black hen's egg kept warm under the arm of a human."

Dean stopped for a minute to think about it. As strange as it was, it was kind of funny to think of a person running around with an egg in their armpit. No wonder the thing turned into a demonic son of a bitch.

"Anything else I need to know? Like how to kill it, maybe?"

"Lidercs can take more than one form. Their natural form is a flaming, chicken-like bird."

"Wow, that's inconspicuous."

"That's why they're also capable of taking the form of a person. They take the form of a man if their victim is female and the form of a woman if their victim is a man," Bobby explained, his voice matter-of-fact.

"This one isn't going after men."

"I never said that they couldn't have a sexual preference. From what I've found, you got some options. You can kill it by trapping it in a hollow tree or by tricking it into taking an impossible task."

Dean sighed in frustration and rubbed the back of his neck. Why couldn't the solution be something simple, like pumping the damn thing full of cast iron bullets? But then, nothing about this whole situation was anything near simple, so he wasn't sure why he had expected this to be.

"What kind of impossible task?" he asked finally, trying to keep the frustration out of his voice. He failed miserably.

"Something like trying to catch water with a sieve or pull sand with a rope. Something that they'll never be able to do," Bobby explained. "That might not be the worst of your problems, though."

"Jesus, Bobby, please don't tell me that."

"If you don't want the truth, I can hang up now." Dean didn't answer, but he didn't hear the telltale click of a phone disconnecting, either, so he continued. "Lidercs are usually controlled by an actual person. The person helps them live and covers for them, an in exchange, the liderc hoards gold for them and brings good luck. It's a win-win for them. On the bright side, your girlfriend will be able to go home tonight. Burning incense and birch branches keeps them from being able to come in to the home."

"Well, thank God for small favors," Dean grumbled quietly, though there was some relief at now having somewhere safe for them to stash Cason. Of course, they couldn't just explain to Cason why it was safe for her to go home, so he wasn't really sure how that was going to work out.

"I take it the case isn't going as well as you would have hoped?"

"That's an understatement. We've got one victim that's fading fast, and this thing—the liderc—has already started zeroing in on his next victim—"

"Would that be the girl that you had me look up? Cason?"

Dean sighed heavily, wishing that everyone would stay the hell out of his business. "Yeah, she's the one. She's sitting in the other room right now running over all the civilian-friendly stuff that we've got, but she knows that something's not right. I don't know how long I can keep her in the dark."

"Keep her in the dark? Keeping her in the dark is dangerous. That's what is going to get her killed, Dean. Besides, what are you going to do when you've finally killed the damn thing? You aren't _really _an FBI agent; you don't have a suspect that you can take into custody or a person to put in a line up. She's going to ask questions, she's going to get suspicious, and you're going to get busted. It's best just to tell her before it gets you in trouble and gets her killed."

"Let's face it, Bobby, this isn't the life that anyone would choose willingly. Sam and I are in it because of what happened to Mom, and you're in it because of what happened to your wife. Hunters don't grow up and settle down and have a family, no matter how much we may want to. We hunt, we fight, and eventually we die bloody. Once you know about all the things that go bump in the night, you can't turn a blind eye to it anymore, and that's not the kind of life she should have," he said, his voice growing louder than he had intended.

"Dean…just be careful, okay?"

"Yeah, I will," he answered quietly before hanging up the phone. Before stepping out of the bathroom, he sent his brother a text message to fill him in on what Bobby had just told him. Sam quickly texted him back, telling him that he would look into the creature in more depth.

"I've found something," Cason said grimly, taking no time once he stepped out of the bathroom.

"Wow, not wasting any time, are you?"

"Charlie doesn't have time to waste. Now, are you going to tell me about your phone call or do you want to listen to what I found?"

"You go ahead."

She took a deep breath and braced herself for what she was about to say. "So, this isn't the first time that he's attacked. This time last year, there was a case like this in Charleston, South Carolina, right?"

"Yeah…"

"I've been looking at old newspaper articles through the school's journalism database, and I've found news articles from other places, too. This time two years ago, there was a case in Fayetteville, Arkansas and another three years ago in Baton Rogue, Louisiana. From the timeline that I've been able to put together, all of the old cases followed the same pattern. He would attack the girl, then she would get sick. After she died, then there would be another victim. That's not what's happening this time. For whatever reason, he isn't waiting for his victims to die—which isn't normal anyway—before having the next one. Why would he change his MO like that?"

Dean quickly crossed the room and stared down at the calendar pages in front of Cason. Sure enough, she was right. In all the previous cases, the girl was dead before the liderc took another victim.

"I don't know," he said quietly, trying to keep the fear out of his voice. At every turn, this case was getting more and more complicated, and with each complication, he got more worried for Cason's safety.

"Well, I do. Kinda. It's a theory, anyway."

"Alright, hit me."

"If you look at the other cases, he attacked one girl a week. The longest he went between victims was seven days, but the smallest interval of time between victims was five days. Now, here, there have been five attacks in two weeks; the longest he's gone is four days, the shortest time is two days. The pattern has been cut in half, like there's two people."

"Shit," Dean swore. "Alright, let me get Sam."

"I'm here. What did we find?"

"Our rapist has a partner," Cason said before Dean could answer.

"Fantastic," Sam grumbled, frustrated.

"Isn't there some backup you can call or something? The local police, other FBI agents?" Cason asked. "He's going to attack again soon. You're going to have to have reinforcements or something. There are other women out there who are out there who don't have a protection detail who are going to get hurt. We don't have time to sit here and screw around."

"Alright, our best lead is still the bar. We'll go over the security footage from the bar and see what we can find. It's square one, but it's the best lead we've got," Sam said, pulling the disks out of his bag. He handed them to Dean and Cason, who started to look over them on her laptop. Sam used his to look into more ways to kill the liderc since impossible tasks and hollow tree trappings didn't exactly seem like viable options.

After staring at her computer screen for another four hours, Cason exploded. "We've been looking at the same damn tapes for four hours, and it's all the same damn thing! I don't see anyone who isn't supposed to be there or anyone who look particularly sketchy. I've got nothing."

"Cason, you've been at this for hours. Just take a break and come back to it," Dean told her, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. She leaned into the touch, taking the small comfort where she could find it.

"I need food. And a shower. Clear out so I can clean up." She shooed them quickly out of the room, though Dean was reluctant to go.

"Do you need me to—"

"Dean, you're, like, three seconds away. I'll be fine. If there's any major emergencies, I'll call you. But every girl needs some privacy every now and again."

"Don't take any chances, please—"

"We don't have time for this. For whatever reason, Charlie's dying. Nobody can tell me why, and we don't seem any closer to finding the son of a bitch who's doing this. I don't have time to be coddled."

He nodded and left, heading down to the room he shared with Sam where he found his brother elbows deep in notes and lore. He sighed and collapsed onto the bed, completely exhausted, contemplating the situation with Cason. Sam stared over at him, not really sure what to say to his brother.

"Are you gonna tell her the truth?" Sam finally asked.

"No," Dean answered. "Not if I can help it."

"You realize what a terrible idea this is, right? She's already starting to notice. She knows that these women shouldn't be dying; she knows that there's something completely wrong with the fact that no one understands why these women are dying. She's noticing that we don't have all the FBI support that we should have. We need to tell her so that she knows just how much danger she's in."

"She's not the type to turn a blind eye. Once she knows, she's going to want to do something about it. Hell, look at the way she's jumped into this case. I have to protect her from—"

"You know better than that, Dean! I tried to protect Jessica, and look how that turned out!"

Dean stared at him for a long time, trying to think of some way to reason with his brother when he knew that it was futile. Telling her everything was the best way to keep her safe; it was also the best way to convince her that he was absolutely fucking crazy. But then, maybe if he told her—even if she thinks he's crazy—she would have the knowledge later when she needed it. If she needed it.

"Damnit."

"If this were anyone else, we would tell them when and if they needed to know. Cason shouldn't be any different."

"She is different," Dean whispered. "Sam, she…"

"Oh my God. You loved her," Sam said quietly as the realization hit him. "When you saw her in the future, you loved her."

Dean was quiet for a long time, staring at his hands, trying to think of the right way to say what he was thinking. How was he going to explain to his brother the complications that this entire situation had thrown into his life? How could he explain that since he'd gotten back, he had thought about all the things that she'd told him when he was in the future.

"I did…in the future, my future self loved her. She had a little girl—a beautiful little girl that looked just like her—and from what I saw, we lived together. And we—they, I guess—were happy. It was the end of the world, and we were still happy. She's the one who figured out how to…handle Lucifer. She and I tried it out, in the future, to make sure it would work. I listened to them say goodbye to their little girl, and I rode off with them into the sunset to see if it would work. It did work, but it didn't stop me from having to watch both of them—me and her—bleed to death in the middle of the road."

"Dean, I'm so sorry—"

"Before he died—the other me—he told me to make sure that I changed things, to make sure that when I changed things, I made sure that she didn't end up dead again."

It wasn't until he stopped talking that Dean realized he was crying. Tears were sliding quietly down his cheeks as he thought about the life that he had only gotten a glimpse of. And while he only got a glimpse of that life, that glimpse was burned into his brain. That was everything that he had wanted, everything that he wouldn't have.

"The little girl—"

"Kendel. Her name was Kendel."

"Was she your daughter?" Sam asked quietly.

"Not biologically. Cason was…she was raped and he got her pregnant."

"And that's why you came running. When I told you about the case, you knew that Cason would be involved, didn't you?"

Dean nodded. "I can't help it. I have to change things for her. Besides, this thing is going to kill her."

"No, it won't," Sam said. "We'll get this thing…or things."

Dean glanced at his watch. "It's been…forty-five minutes. Shouldn't she be out of the shower by now?"

"She's having a rough time. Give her some time. Now, we need to talk about getting some birch branches and incense to ward her house, her hotel room, maybe the bar."

"That could be a good plan. If we ward the bar, then the liderc won't be able to get in the bar to find more victims. Then we could check and see who isn't able to get inside the bar," Dean suggested, feeling a little bit better about having a plan. It bothered him that Cason hadn't called yet. He let her go a few minutes longer before he couldn't stand it anymore.

"I'm going to check on Cason."

He knocked on the door, but Cason didn't answer. He knocked again, and there was still no answer. Instead of trying again, he picked the lock and pushed the door open to find the room both dark and empty. Without thinking, he turned on all the lights and checked again, hoping beyond anything that she was going to pop out from underneath the bed at any second.

"Cason? Cason?" He checked the bathroom again. "Cason!"

Then he saw it. The small white piece of paper sitting on the cheap hotel dresser, held in place by the base of a lamp. He snatched it up and quickly read it.

_Charlie died. Gone to hospital._

"Shit!"

He turned and ran out the room, stopping long enough to grab Sam from their room. In a screech of rubber, he was peeling out the parking lot as Sam held on for dear life to the armrest.

"Where are we going?"

"Charlie's dead. For whatever reason, the hospital called Cason. Maybe she's listed on her contact sheet or something. I don't know; she just left a note that said she'd be at the hospital."

They pulled up in front of the hospital and Dean was running inside, leaving Sam in the still-running car. Sam quickly turned off the car and followed his brother inside. Dean followed the arrows down the stairs to the morgue, not bothering to stop to talk to the doctors and nurses that were staring after him in shock. Sam was close on his heels. Dean grabbed the first person he could when he got to the morgue, a twenty-something guy in scrubs.

"I'm looking for a woman. Her names is Cason, she's about this tall," he said, holding his hand at shoulder height. "She's got red hair, green eyes. Her friend Charlie—um, Charlotte Preston just died."

"Oh, yeah. She came in and talked to the doctors. Picked up the personal items and such. She can't sign off on the release forms because she's not legally allowed. But she left about twenty minutes ago," he said.

"Thanks," Sam said, after his brother took off without a word. When they were back in the car, he asked quickly, "Where do you think she would go? Could she have gone back to the hotel?"

"We were just there. And that's not somewhere she'd go. It's not comforting."

"Her apartment?"

"We could try it. Its close," Dean said, forcing the words through gritted teeth.

But her apartment was equally as empty as her hotel room had been. They looked around for any sign that she had been there, but they turned up nothing. It looked exactly the same as it had when Dean and Cason had come by two days before.

"Cason! Cason!"

"She's not here, Dean."

"I know that, damnit! Um…the bar! Sh-she might try the bar!"

It took them five minutes to get to the bar, and those five minutes might as well have been hours. Dean's heart was racing; he could feel the blood pounding in his ears as he tried to keep his hands from shaking. His breathing was heavy and his eyes were watering as he fought to keep the panic under control.

The bar was deserted—not a single car in the parking lot. All the lights were off, the windows dark. Dean pulled out his lock pick kit, ready to pick the lock, but the door was already ajar. It wasn't a good sign, and he had to fight the bile rising in his throat.

"Cason! God, Cason…please, answer me! Cason!" Dean was screaming at the top of his lungs, desperately hoping that she was going to answer back. He didn't hear any answer. "Lights, Sam. Get the lights."

Sam flipped on all the lights and Dean almost threw up. On the bar, there was a single bottle of bourbon—Booker's, the same stuff she had given him a shot of when he first met her—and a shot glass. Problem was that the bottle wasn't standing upright; it was turned on its side, leaking liquor all over the counter. The shot glass was broken, and the barstool was flipped over. There were several chairs turned over, one with a broken leg.

They followed the pattern of damage all the way back to the back of the bar, where they heard the sounds of struggle. The door to the back storeroom was closed and locked, and inside they could hear the smacking of fists on flesh and grunts of exertion. There was a loud, sharp cry—but it wasn't a woman's voice.

"You _bitch_!" they heard a man's voice shout.

"Cason!" Dean and Sam slammed themselves into the door, but it didn't move. They tried again, this time pushing the door loose. It didn't open, but it wasn't stuck tight. On the third try, the door burst open.

Cason was sprawled face-down on the floor, a large, bloody knot on her temple. Her clothes were disheveled—her shirt ripped open, her pants down around her ankles. The back window was open, Cason's attacker shimmying out the window. Sam took off out the window after him while Dean dropped to his knees beside her, pulling off his jacket to cover her.

"No. No, no, no…Cason," Dean whispered, trying to assess her injuries. There was blood smeared down the side of her face from the gash on her temple. But what was more horrifying was the blood smeared on her thighs and belly.

"Dean?" she whispered. Only after she spoke did he notice the hand-shaped bruises around her neck. He'd tried to strangle her.

"Yeah, it's me. I'm gonna keep you safe, now. I'm not gonna let anyone hurt you again, I promise. God, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"I shouldn'ta…left. The hossspital called…" Her words were slurred, and that was scary, too. He was already thinking about brain damage and worse…

"I should have come with you. It's gonna be…" He was about to tell her that everything was going to be okay, but he couldn't bring himself to say that. Not only was she now a victim of many women's worst nightmares, he also knew that this thing could kill her. That within hours she would start to sicken and die. "I'm gonna take care of you, I am. I'm gonna take care of you."

She grabbed his jacket and pulled it tight around her as she tried to sit up. When she moved, she screeched in pain before biting it back. Dean moved to help her sit up, but she pushed his hand away.

"Need to do it by myself…"

He watched her struggle into a sitting position; it took far too long and she was clearly in excruciating pain, but she eventually made it. Once she was sitting, she held her head in her hands and stared at the floor, trying to keep from crying. Dean could tell it was taking all her effort to stay upright, and even as she was sitting there, she was still swaying.

"Dean? Can I ask you something?"

"Anything."

"Can I lean on you?" her voice broke as she asked.

"Yes. God, yes. If you need to…anything you need."

She nodded and leaned back, letting her bruised and torn body rest against his side. One of her hands wrapped around his wrist tightly as she tried to keep her pain under control.

"Cason, I hate to ask, but we have to know—"

"Yes," she choked out. "Yeah, he did."

"I'm so sorry. I'm so—"

"Don't say you're sorry. This wasn't your fault. You didn't rap…"

She never got to finish her sentence because she slumped against him and lost consciousness.


	5. Getting a Break

**Author's Note: So, another chapter. As I'm sure you've noticed by now, the material is a bit dark and adultish. If it bothers you or you think I need to up the rating, let me know. Also, I apologize for the delay; school has been eating away at my precious time, leaving far less time for me to spend with the Winchesters than I would like. So, thank you to those of you who reviewed the last chapter, and please review this one!**

* * *

><p>Dean didn't remember ever moving this fast before. Before he even thought about it, he was on the phone with the emergency dispatcher. He could hear his voice shaking, but there was nothing he could do to stop it; as long as he was understandable, he didn't care. Cason was frighteningly still, her body completely limp as he held her in a semi-upright position.<p>

"There's been another attack," he said, forcing the words out of his mouth. Bruises and blood were all over Cason's body, and as much as he hated to look at them, the dispatcher needed to know the extent of her injuries. "I think he must have hit her in the head, because she's got a huge bloody bump on her head. There's, um, scratches and blood on her stomach and legs, and—"

"Slow down, sir. It's going to be okay. Tell me where you are so that we can send help—"

"Don't tell me it's going to be okay! Do you know what happened to the other women that were attacked?" he snapped. "They're dead. Now hurry the hell up and get here to help her."

"Okay. We're coming as fast as we can so that doesn't happen. Can you tell me where you are?"

"A bar. It's called Bloody Sunday. I-I can't remember the address."

"That's fine. I've got it right here. An ambulance and the police are on the way. Now, you said she had a bump on her head. Is she awake?"

"Not anymore. She was when I found her, but she passed out."

"I need you to check her pulse and her breathing?"

He'd already done so. "She's still breathing, and her heart rate is normal."

The dispatcher spent the rest of the time asking useless questions designed to keep him calm. He knew exactly what she was doing, but he let the questions work. He stayed focused on Cason, trying to be comforted by the rise and fall of her chest and the fact that her skin wasn't scalding hot.

When he heard the ambulance pull up, he quietly hung up the phone with the dispatcher and concentrated on the EMTs. They carefully lowered her to the floor and began to put her in a neck brace while Dean helplessly looked on. Sam returned as they were wheeling her out to the ambulance on a stretcher, but the look on his face told Dean that the liderc had escaped.

"Excuse me, agents?" one of the EMTs asked. "Is someone going to ride with her or are you—"

"I'll ride with her," Dean answered before the man had a chance to finish what he was saying. He gestured to Sam. "He'll follow us to the hospital."

Dean held her had in his for as long as he could, but her vitals signs started jumping all over the place. Her heart rate started racing and then slowing down dramatically. Her breathing slowed, too, far too much for his liking; at times, the rise and fall of her chest was nearly indiscernible. More than once, he wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her awake, but the EMTs wouldn't let him close to her.

"Son of a bitch beat her pretty bad, didn't he?" one of the EMTs commented.

"Is she gonna be okay?" Dean asked. They didn't answer; instead they kept chattering on in terms that only medical personnel would understand. It only made everything that much worse—Dean's temper included.

By the time they reached the hospital, it was a small miracle that he didn't have steam pouring out of his ears; his mouth was set in a firm, angry line when he stepped out of the ambulance. He had to practically chase after the stretcher as they wheeled her into the hospital at top speed. A young doctor was calling for a CT scan and an assortment of other things that Dean had heard in passing but didn't understand.

"You're the one that found her?" one of the nurses asked. Dean nodded, too caught up to notice that Sam had arrived and was standing behind them. "I'm going to need you to answer some medical questions for me."

"I don't really know very much about that kind of stuff," he answered. "I'm Dean Young with the FBI. My partner and I have been investigating the sexual assaults in the area."

"Fine job you've been doing, too," the nurse grumbled.

"Ma'am, we're doing the best we can, and tonight we got a break. Now, if you can get us our witness—Cason Butler—we'll be able to do more," Sam said, interrupting before his brother could say something that he was going to regret.

"Do you know her contact information so that we can notify her next of kin?"

"It's in her phone," Dean answered, his voice flat.

Sam quickly got the number for her parents and guided Dean to a chair to wait for someone to tell them what was going on. The local police were called in, and just for the sake of being official, took a statement from the brothers. Then they were left to sit there and wait.

"Do you want anything to drink?" Sam asked quietly, slightly disturbed at how profoundly silent his brother was being. Dean just shook his head. "You sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure. Cason just got attacked, got beat to hell…why are we worried about drinks?"

"You and I both know that there's nothing we can do until the doctor comes and talks to us or the crime scene techs get done with the scene."

Dean knew that his brother was right, but it didn't make it any easier for him to sit there and wait for the doctor to come and talk to him. It was an forty-five minutes before anyone came out to talk to them, and when someone finally did show, it wasn't the person that Dean was hoping to see. Instead of a doctor, it was a middle-aged nurse in surgical scrubs—her hair tucked up into a scrub cap—with some blood smeared on the front of her apron.

"Cason Butler's party?"

Dean was up before she finished speaking. "That's us." He flashed his fake badge at her. "Sam and Dean Young, FBI. Her family hasn't made it here yet. How's she doing?"

"Whoever got a hold of this girl beat her pretty bad. She's got a few broken ribs and some considerable damage to her spleen. Right now, we're trying to save as much of the splenic tissue as we can so that we only have to remove part of it. She's lost some blood, but we're giving her a transfusion."

"So, she's going to be okay?"

"We still have a ways to go in the surgery, but you got her here quickly, and that's a good thing. I'll keep you posted."

"That's not an answer," Dean snapped, but the nurse was already walking away. "Goddamnit. Please tell me that you got something chasing after that son of a bitch."

"Well, I can tell you that he didn't turn into a fiery bird and fly away," Sam answered. "I lost him because I wasn't fast enough."

"Sam, she's…if we don't kill this thing, it's going to kill her. That's been the pattern with all of them."

"Yeah, well, she doesn't exactly fit the pattern," Sam said quietly.

"What do you mean? She fits it to a T. Small, red-haired, pretty—"

"That's not what I meant. Aside from her physical appearance, nothing about her case fits the bill. He followed the others home and attacked them there. He sabotaged Cason's car in the parking lot. When he attacked her, it was at the bar. He didn't come after her at the hotel, where she was sleeping. He beat her, and he didn't do that with any of the others. That's a lot of pattern-breaking for one girl."

"So what are you saying?"

"I don't know. I just think that that's…interesting. I mean, he had to work to go after Cason. He had to work around us, and he had to know that she wasn't going to be an easy mark. I mean, she's armed at all times. I just want to know why he went to all the trouble to have her. What's so special? Why this girl?"

"You can ask him right before we kill the son of a bitch. Which, by the way, is going to be hard as hell considering that we're supposed to trick him into an impossible task or lock him in a hollow tree. How the hell are we gonna do that?" Dean said, his voice sounding startlingly empty. "You know, when you told me about this case, I only wanted one thing—to save the girl and kill the son of a bitch that was trying to hurt her—and now I've managed to let him attack her and get away with it."

"You didn't let him get away with it. And that was two things."

Dean just clenched his jaw and stared at the tile under his feet, trying to ignore the way that the blotchy age stains reminded him of the bruises he'd seen on Cason's pale skin. He tried to fight the overwhelming sense of failure that was seeping into his bones and chilling him to the core; he needed to be angry, because it was too easy to fall over and not get up if he was any other way. He had too many years of experience dealing with that feeling of failure, and he needed all those lessons now.

"We need help on this. Get Bobby here. Now," he whispered.

Sam nodded before stepping out around the corner to make his phone call. Dean just sat there, staring at the doors that the nurse had gone through, hoping to see someone come out with a smile on their face and happy news. When Sam came back, he was still waiting. They sat together and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And then three hours and twelve minutes later, the same little nurse came out, this time without the bloody surgical apron. Behind her was a doctor, wearing scrubs and a small smile. Dean was on his feet in an instant.

"You're waiting for information about Cason Butler?" the doctor asked.

"Yeah," Dean answered hurriedly.

"We had to do a partial splenectomy, which means that we had to take out part of her spleen. There was some bleeding into the abdominal cavity, but we were able to get it stopped and cleaned out. She's going to have to stay still for a while so that she has time to heal and doesn't break her stitches. We did a CT scan when she first came in, and it revealed that she has a pretty nasty concussion, but she should be fine. She's in recovery now, and we'll be moving her to a room soon." the doctor explained. "Does she have any family coming?"

"Her parents are on the way," Sam said. "They had to drive. They should be here shortly."

"Well, you won't be able to talk to her for a few hours. She needs rest and we need to keep a close eye on her. Head injuries can be nasty, and she's going to need twenty-four hour observation," the doctor told them.

Dean nodded and walked away. Sam spoke to the doctor for another moment and then joined his brother. Only then did Sam realize just how exhausted his brother was; he knew that Dean had been pushing himself on this case, but he hadn't been sure of just how hard. There were dark circles under his eyes and a fragility in his movements that Sam hadn't noticed before.

"We should go back to the crime scene and see what we can find," Dean whispered when his brother finally joined him.

"Okay, let's do that. We can come back later, when she's awake."

The bar was dark and locked when they arrived, the crime scene techs long gone. Still, they parked behind the bar, out of sight of anyone driving by and slipped in quietly—carrying their badges, just in case.

"See if you can find any trace of the burnt claw marks around any of the entrances. Look around the window where he escaped," Dean said quietly. Sam didn't object to the order; he knew all too well that this was Dean's case. Sam may have been the one to find it, but Dean was the one who had been living and breathing it since the minute he realized who it would involve. He had a stake in this, and Sam knew better than to get in the way when his brother got into the mindset he was now. Instead, he set to the task and tried his best to ignore the harder task left to his brother.

Dean worked methodically—and with far more care than he usually would have taken—starting at the front door and moving towards the back room. He could practically see the events playing out before his eyes. Cason would have been sitting at the bar, sipping her whiskey, when her attacker dragged her to the back. In the struggle, she would have knocked over the chairs, spilled her whiskey, and caused general mayhem. He walked to the door of the back room where he had found her.

"And if I'm a pathetic rapist and my victim has a fighting chance, I would lock her in the room with me to ensure that she doesn't go anywhere," he whispered quietly to himself. "And when that doesn't work, I hit her on the head…"

He was meticulous, going over every nook and cranny of the room—looking for traces of anything that the crime scene techs may have missed—but he found nothing but the smears of Cason's blood on the floor. Trying to fight the frustration and anger that were threatening to boil out of control within him, he ran through the usual drill: checked for sulfur or any other typical signs of demonic activity, double and triple checked everything he had already done, and then longed for a stiff drink.

"There's no sign of anything demonic," Sam said abruptly when he returned from checking the outside of the building. "No burns, no sulfur, no nothing. However, after a bit more looking, I did find this." He dropped a small, black leather wallet onto the table beside Dean.

"Where did you find it?"

"It was on the ground along the path he took when he got away. I'm guessing the crime scene techs didn't go that far."

Dean picked it up and flipped it open. Inside, he found nothing as convenient as a driver's license, but there was a few dollars and some old movie ticket stubs. He had a Blockbuster card, but there was no name on it. In frustration, Dean tossed it back onto the table and ran a hand through his short hair.

"There's nothing in it that we can use, Sam."

"That's because you didn't check in all of the pockets," his brother answered, taking the wallet and opening it up. In a small flap that Dean had ignored earlier—mostly because it had appeared empty—was a thin, black card. It was no more than a piece of laminated construction paper, really, but apparently, it was a library card. And on the library card was a name.

"Ryan Hadley," Sam said, reading the name off the card. Hearing the name sent Dean reeling, memories flashing through his mind.

"_So where's her real father?" he asked Cason. He could tell that he had struck a nerve, that he had asked a question that she didn't want to answer. "Answer it completely and fully."_

_"I'm assuming that he's dead. I sent him to Kansas City on a supply run after he, uh—he, um…" She stared down at her hands, not wanting to look him in the eye. He couldn't tell if it was because she was ashamed of what she had to say or if she was just trying to word it delicately. "After he had his way with me, to put it delicately."_

_"What was his name?"_

_"Ryan Hadley. But he's gone, and I'm not going to spend another minute thinking about him. Not when I have other things in my life to be grateful for. He gave me a wonderful daughter, and now she has a great father."_

"Ryan Hadley?" Dean asked, barely able to force the words past his lips.

"Yeah. I mean, I don't know that this belongs to the guy who hurt Cason, but—"

"It's his," he whispered. Sam didn't bother to ask how his brother knew that, not when his look made it all too clear. "It's the same guy who—"

"Yeah, I got it. That explains the break in the pattern," Sam said quietly, trying to point out the silver lining in the storm cloud.

"What?"

"If this is the same guy who hurt her before—the one that you knew about from 2014—then he can't be the liderc. If his attacking her didn't kill her then, it won't kill her now," Sam explained. "It explains why he took the measures he did. He isn't a supernatural being, so he had to use brute force."

"That doesn't make sense, though. She had the burn marks outside her window. The liderc was after her."

"Maybe this Ryan Hadley just took advantage of the pattern. Could be a coincidence. "

"It's never a coincidence," Dean muttered. "It's all related somehow—"

He was cut off as his phone started to ring. He stared down at the screen, hoping to identify the number. It wasn't one that was familiar, but he answered it anyway. It was more than likely the police calling to tell the oh-so-helpful "FBI agents" what they had found.

"Hello?" he answered.

"Is this Dean Winchester?" a gruff, male voice asked in a thick, southern drawl.

"Depends. Who's asking?"

"Look, son, I don't know who you're used to dealin' with, but it ain't me. Now, my daughter said that she's got something important that she needs to tell you, and the doctors aren't lettin' her call—"

"Your daughter?" Dean asked, his mind working overdrive to put the pieces together.

"Cason Butler. She had your number, said that she needed to talk you real bad. The doctors don't want her talking to you until tomorrow after she's rested, but she said that it couldn't wait. Now, I don't know what kind of operation you're runnin' here, Mr. FBI, but—"

"I'll be there in five minutes," Dean said.

"See that you are. She's in room 123."

"Who was that?" Sam asked, trailing behind his brother as they quickly headed back to the Impala.

"Cason's dad. He said that she was awake and wanted to talk to us but that the doctors didn't want her to call. They wanted her to rest more first, so she had her dad make the call instead."

"Do you think it's about Hadley?"

"I don't know, but if she's wanting to talk to us this bad, I'm betting that it's important. Besides, I want to see how she's doing. You say that she won't be one of the ones that gets sick, but I want to see for myself."

They made it to the hospital and were standing in Cason's room four minutes and thirty-three seconds later. Cason was lying down in bed, her face pale—making the bruises stand out even more. A middle-aged woman with strawberry blonde hair and perfectly manicured nails sat in a chair by her bedside. The family resemblance was too strong for her to be anyone other than Cason's mother. An older man with sharp, chiseled features and graying hair stood by the doorway. Dean could only assume that he was her father.

Cason's eyes brightened when she saw the brothers standing in her room.

"You came. Good. I was a little afraid that my _father_—" she gave a pointed look to the older man—"might have scared you off."

"It takes more than that to scare me," Dean replied, his voice light and easy. "How are you feeling?"

"Like someone tried to bash my head in and rip out my spleen. Mom, Dad, I need you to step out, please," she said quietly to her parents. Her mother rose without a word and stepped outside. It was only after a long moment of staring and unspoken signs that her father followed his wife and closed the door.

"The man who ra…hurt me. His name is Ryan Hadley. He come into the bar all the time," she said quietly, without delay or decoration.

"We found his wallet at the scene," Dean told her. In any other circumstance, he would be slipping a hand over hers comfortingly, but now was neither the time nor place for it.

"I was sitting at the bar and I heard something at the door. I thought it was probably Boston coming to check things over, but then he comes walking through the door. He hit me right off and started pulling me towards the back by my hair—"

"Cason, you don't have to do this now."

"Yeah, I do," she said, though her voice was trembling and she was gripping the edge of the bed with white knuckles. "He said something about wanting me first, before…before someone else. It didn't sound like any other word that I'd heard before. It was lid-something—"

"Liderc?" Sam suggested.

Cason nodded weakly and then winced as pain shot through her battered skull. "He said that his liderc had the corner market on red-heads but that he…he wanted me first. He didn't want…" She trailed off, tears streaming down her cheeks. She quickly wiped them away, only to realize that it was futile; as soon as she wiped some of them away, others were already flowing to take their place. "I'm sorry; I'm making a scene—"

"No, you're fine. It's okay to be upset," Dean whispered. Sam took a step back into the corner of the room, trying to be as small and unobtrusive as possible.

"He said that he didn't want a demon's sloppy seconds." She finally managed to force the words past her lips, her voice full of disgust. Dean only hoped that the disgust was for the son of a bitch who had done this to her and not at herself.

"Were those his exact words?"

"Yeah. I remember thinking that if he could do this to anyone, he had to be the demon." She wiped at her eyes again, but instead of gripping the side of the bed again, she reached for Dean's hand.

"Do you remember what I told you right before you passed out?" Dean asked her.

"You said you were sorry, and that you wouldn't let anyone hurt me ever again. While heroic, it does seem a bit silly…the worst things in life hurt, but then, so do some of the best…or so I've been told."

"I'm going to get this son of a bitch, I promise."

She believed him. As he was now, vengeance and fury written on his face, she believed that he would do as he said.

"Well then get to it," she answered, releasing his hand.

He nodded and stood silently, unsure of what to say to her. The weight of his guilt was still settled in his stomach, making him almost nauseous. As he went to walk away, she grabbed his hand.

"Hey, Dean? Can you do something for me?"

"Yeah. Anything."

"They took my gun and won't give it back…" Before she could finish, he pulled his Colt 1911 out of the waistband of his pants and put it in her hand. She stared at it for a long moment, testing the feel of it in her hand. It wasn't perfect, but it helped. It made her feel just a little safer. Then, she did something that she thought she would never do again.

She smiled.


	6. Blood and Books

**Author's Note: I'm super sorry for how long it has taken me to update. School has been crazy since it started, and two tests per week, plus studying and working is not leaving me enough time to write and still sleep. So I do apologize. I'm going to try to cram in some serious writing during my fall break and get y'all some more chapters. Anyway, thank you for your reviews and your patience and your general all around awesomeness. I hope you enjoy!**

* * *

><p>"Do you have any idea how to find this thing?" Sam asked as they left the room. The image of Cason lying in bed, weak and pale with a twisted smile on her face as she tested the weight of Dean's gun in her hand, would be burned into his memory until the day he died. He knew that giving her the gun would do more to make her feel safe than anything else would, more than doctors or policemen or even her parents, but he still didn't like it.<p>

Her father didn't seem to like it all that much either, and he expressed his displeasure when he grabbed Dean's arm as they passed by.

"What the hell are you playin' at, givin' my daughter a gun?" he demanded, his face red and eyes blazing.

"The doctors wouldn't give hers back, and she didn't feel safe," Dean answered.

"There's a reason those doctors didn't give it back, Agent Young. Rape victims have a tendency to have lower feelings of self-worth and higher levels of depression. Giving her a gun is the worst possible idea—"

Realizing where the conversation was going, Sam put a hand on his brother's shoulder, trying to keep him from completely losing his cool. It did little good, though he was pleasantly surprised when Dean didn't slam Cason's father into the glass window that separated her room from the hallway. The only reason that he didn't was probably because the blinds were open and Cason could see into the hallway.

"Mr. Butler, do you really think your daughter is going to kill herself? Just now, she very calmly gave us a very important piece of evidence about the man who attacked her. She woke up from surgery how long ago?"

"Two hours."

"She's been out of surgery for two hours and the first thing she wants to do is see us so that she can tell us who hurt her. She's a strong woman—the strongest woman I have ever met—and she's got a hell of a lot to live for. There's no way that she's going to let that son of a bitch beat her by killing herself. No way in hell."

Mr. Butler's eyes widened as Dean pushed past him; Sam nodded politely at the older man and followed after his brother. When they reached the nurses' station, they found Mrs. Butler talking to one of the many nurses. Upon seeing them, she approached, wringing her hands nervously.

"Agents?" she asked quietly. Her face was pale—almost as pale as Cason's, and she didn't have the excuse of blood loss—and her eyes wide, as if in shock. "Is it true that the other women who were attacked…is it true that they d-died?"

Dean looked to his brother, unable to bring himself to answer the question, despite his knowledge that Cason more than likely wouldn't get sick. It still involved acknowledging the fact that she had been hurt in a way that no human being ever deserved to be hurt, and that was something that he wasn't ready to do yet. He had come here with the intent of trying to keep this very thing from happening, and he had watched it happen right in front of him.

"Ma'am," Sam said, taking the distraught woman by the elbow and leading her to a chair where she could sit down. "The previous victims have passed on, yes—"

He got no further before she started sobbing into his shirtfront. Sam let her cry for a moment—something she had more than likely not had a chance to do yet because she was trying to keep up a strong front for her daughter—before pulling away. Mrs. Butler stared at him, complete despair in her eyes.

"Mrs. Butler, Cason's case is different from the others. There are several differences in the way that she was attacked that make me think that she's going to be different. I think we've probably got a copycat who used the recent attacks as a cover so that he wouldn't be suspected of hurting your daughter."

"You really think that or are you just trying to calm me down?"

"I really do believe that," Sam answered quietly. "I really do. I've only known your daughter for a very short time, but I learned pretty fast that she's stubborn. She's got the will to live, and she's not going to let anyone take that from her. Now go be with your daughter."

She nodded and headed back down the hall to her daughter's room. Sam and Dean made it back to the car before calling Bobby again.

"What?" Bobby snapped when he answered the phone again. "I'm four hours into my trip and you're already calling me? I'm coming as fast as I can."

"We know," Dean said quickly, putting it on speakerphone so that Sam could hear. "You said that sometimes a liderc can have a human master?"

"Yeah? So?"

"We've got our master. His name is Ryan Hadley. He's the one who raped Cason. What kind of control is he gonna have over this thing?"

"That depends on which version of the mythology you read. One version says that the liderc is the one with more power, that the human sold his soul to the liderc for riches."

"That doesn't make sense," Sam cut in. "If the goal for the liderc is to get the soul, there would be no sense in sticking around after he got it. There has to be some kind of incentive for it to stay."

"That's where the other stories come in. Some of them say that it's more of a mutual agreement, while others say that the master can give orders to the liderc and it will have to follow. Your best bet is to find that son of a bitch and ask him."

"Yeah, I'm sure that'll work real well. We'll just politely ask him if happens to be in control of any supernatural lust demons that like to rape and kill woman," Dean snapped sarcastically.

"Either way we've got to find him. That's where we'll start," Sam said decisively.

"Keep me posted."

"Will do, Bobby."

Just before Bobby could disconnect, Dean called his name. "Bobby?"

"Yeah, Dean?"

"Please hurry."

When Bobby didn't have a snide comment to make back, it did nothing to make Dean feel any better. His hands were gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles as he fought to keep his concentration on the road.

"Go to the police station," Sam said quietly. "We can put out an APB on Hadley."

Now that he had a direction, Dean put the pedal to the metal and made it to the police station in minimal time. Sure, they got some strange looks when they burnt rubber screeching up in front of the police station that way, but neither one of them seemed to particularly care.

"Where's Detective Bennett?" Dean snapped, asking for the lead investigating officer. Sam's eyebrows shot up in surprise. He hadn't been aware that Dean even knew the guy's name. Sam was the only one who had really had any contact with the Inspector, leaving Dean to do most of the field work with Cason. Up until this point, Dean hadn't cared about knowing the detective.

"He's in his office," the receptionist said quietly, her eyes wide in shock. Only after hearing her words did Dean realize that he had no idea where the detective's office was. Sam took the lead, leaving his brother to follow close behind.

"It's a guy named Ryan Hadley. You need to put out an APB and get some extra men out on the streets."

Dean's words caught the detective—who was pacing behind his desk, staring at a wall of pictures—off guard. Bennett stared at the brothers for a moment, as if he hadn't understood what the elder Winchester had said. After recovering his bearings, the detective reached for a file on his desk and looked into it.

"Ryan Hadley? Where'd you get that name?" he asked after recovering his wits.

"Cason Butler. She gave us a name. We also found his wallet at the crime scene," Dean answered, dropping Hadley's wallet onto the desk.

"We searched the crime scene. Where did you find this?" Bennett asked, noting that it wasn't in an evidence bag.

"It was in the woods. When I chased him out of the bar, he must have dropped it," Sam said quietly.

"And the Butler girl could identify him?"

"Yeah. Didn't even bother to hide his face. Doctor said he popped her pretty good with the pistol; maybe he figured he hit her hard enough to kill her or at least for her to forget. Hell, maybe he didn't care. It doesn't really matter, I guess, as long as she can ID him," Dean said, his hands clenching into fists as he thought about it.

"Alright, we'll put out an APB and bring him in for questioning," Bennett agreed, grabbing his phone to make some calls.

"We should release a statement to the media," Sam commented before Bennett could dial a number. "We need to tell them that Cas—Miss Butler is in critical condition and hasn't regained consciousness. If he thinks she could rat him out, he'll flee town and start somewhere else."

"This ends here," Dean whispered. "No one else gets hurt because of this son of a bitch."

"I agree. Let me make a call and we'll go get this guy."

It took Bennett fifteen minutes to put out the APB and get Hadley's address and get more people in the office to start combing through the evidence again. His receptionist started making calls to get the local media, releasing statements and answering questions.

Sam and Dean followed the detective to the address that they had for Ryan Hadley—a small brick house with blue green shutters that were locked up tight. They knocked on the door, but no one answered. There was no car in the driveway, but they checked around back, just in case.

"Either he's not here or he's locked down tight in there," Sam said with a frustrated sigh.

"Damnit, Okay, you're a rapist on the run. Where would you go?" Dean asked, thinking out loud.

"I don't know. I'm not a rapist. Bennett's on the phone getting us a warrant. I don't know how long that will take."

"According to the DA, we'll have our warrant within the hour," Bennett said, hanging up the phone. "Do we know anything about this guy?"

"Not enough. He's got a library card and a thing for red-heads. That's about it."

Bennett shook his head. "Library's closed this time of night and so are all the bars."

"Not all the libraries," Sam said quietly. "The main library on campus is open twenty-four hours today."

Dean was in the car before hearing any more. Sam slid into the passenger seat, leaving Bennett standing in the front yard, waiting for the warrant so that he could search the house.

"What do we know about the library?" Sam asked.

"Not much. I've only picked Cason up out front."

"Then let's talk to someone who knows. Give me your phone."

"What?"

"Give me your phone!" Dean handed over his phone and Sam quickly pulled up the recent calls and dialed the last incoming call. A gruff male voice answered.

"Mr. Butler? This is agent—" Sam started.

"I know who it is. I recognize the number, Mr. FBI. What do you want?"

"Is your daughter awake?"

"She is now. I'm guessin' you want to talk to her?"

"If she's able," Sam answered.

"Hello?" Cason asked, her voice groggy.

"Cason, its Sam Winchester. You spend plenty of time in the library, right?"

"I'm a master's candidate. Of course I spent a lot of time in the library. Why are you asking me this?"

"We've got a lead on Ryan Hadley. We think he's in the library. Do you know where we would find a section on folklore?" he asked.

She was silent for a long moment, trying to think past the morphine haze and the pounding pain in her skull. It took her a minute to organize her thoughts, but she finally got it together. "We don't really have one. It depends on what aspect of folklore you talking about. The literary stuff will be on level three—"

"It would be…folklore and sexuality."

"Try the anthropology section on level seven of the Reynolds wing. If not there, try the religion department on the first level of the Wilson wing," she said slowly. "I spend a lot of time in the Wilson wing…I've seen him there once or twice…"

"Okay. We're gonna get this guy, alright. Don't worry."

"Everyone keeps saying that. Stop saying it and just do it. He needs to go away for what he's done. But if he got shot trying to escape custody, that would be okay, too."

"Don't let my brother hear you say that."

"Don't let me hear what?" Dean asked.

"The world would be a better place for him not being in it," she said quietly. "Can't say anyone would lament his passing. Just get him, alright?"

She hung up and Sam stared at the phone for a minute. "She said to look on the first level of the Wilson wing or the seventh level of the Reynolds wing. She's seen him once of twice in the Wilson wing."

"Then that's where we'll go."

They charged into the library like men on a mission, only stopping long enough to flash their badges at a librarian, who quickly stepped out of the way. They moved quietly down the stairs to the first level, guns drawn. The door creaked open, and they both winced; it was little details like that that could give away their position. They could only hope that wherever Hadley was, he hadn't heard their entrance.

They quietly ran along the side of the walls, staring down the aisles as they went. The florescent lights flickered in the ceiling, casting shadows over the stacks and into the corners of the library. After working around the outside walls, they walked between the shelves.

There, between the shelves, they found a tall stocky man cramming his body in the tight space. He had wide, muscular shoulders covered in the thin blue cotton of a t-shirt; his long legs were tucked up against his chest, his knees pressing at his chin. Shaggy blonde hair was pulled up in a ponytail out of his face. On the floor in front of him was a book, flipped open to a page of text and a gruesome picture of a naked young woman pinned under a fiery bird, claws tearing at her flesh. He glanced up as the brothers started towards him, and immediately tried to take off.

"Looks fascinating. Whatcha reading?" Dean asked, just before he kicked the guy in the side of the head.

Blood sprayed from his nose as he went down. He tucked the book under his arm and tried to scramble to his feet, but Dean was on him, holding him down. Before he could hit him again, Sam held him back. It had been dark when Sam chased him, but he had caught a glimpse of the man passing under a streetlight; he knew it was him.

"Where is it?" Dean snapped, completely out of patience for doing things the "right way." He shrugged off his brother's grip, and Sam let go, instead picking up the book to focus on what Hadley had been reading.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Hadley gasped back, trying to stop the blood flowing from his nose.

"You know damn well what we're talking about. The thing in the book. Where is it?"

"I don't know! I really don't know! Please don't hit me again."

"You're it's master. You're controlling it and you expect me to believe that you don't know where it is?"

"I didn't mean for this to happen. I was reading for an English class…it was for a paper on folklore and sexuality, and there was this whole section on this thing…on a liderc. I kept looking and I found a ritual—I didn't think it would work. These things, they never work. It's always just a bunch of crap. But then I did the ritual a-and there it was. I couldn't send it back, and he kept telling me that he could make me rich, that he could make me feel better than I had ever felt and it didn't seem so bad, but then…" Hadley trailed off, trying to focus.

"But then people started dying," Sam finished.

"Yeah. People started dying, and then it was too late. I couldn't send it back because it was tied to me and I don't know…I don't know how…I didn't mean to. I'm sorry…"

Dean stared at the man bleeding on the floor in front of him. "You know, I might believe that if it hadn't been for what you said to Cason," Dean whispered, getting in Hadley's face. "You told her that you didn't want a demon's sloppy seconds. You knew it was after her, and you know where it is now."

Hadley stared at Dean and realized that his lie wasn't going to get him out of his situation. He was caught, and he knew it. So he did the only thing he knew to do: he threw his head back and laughed. He laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world, like it was all one big, funny, joke. When Dean hit him again, he stopped laughing.

"Tell me how it works. Now."

"Once it zeroes in on a victim, he follows her, stalks her, and figures out the best time to take her. Girl doesn't have a chance," Hadley explained.

"Why? What's the point in it?"

"It feeds off sexual energy; that's its…life force or whatever. That's the reason it favors red-heads. Did you know that they did a study that shows that red-headed women have more sex? They're more sexual beings, and so they've got more of the energy he's looking for."

"What? That's crap!"

"Actually, they did a study that says he's right. Red-headed women do have more sex," Sam whispered in his ear.

Dean pushed the fact aside and focused again on Hadley. "And I bet you get absolutely nothing out of that little deal, do you?" Dean growled skeptically.

"He does me favors from time to time. And he wasn't lying when he said that he could make me feel like I've never felt before," Hadley answered suggestively.

"You can feel it," Sam said, realization dawning as he looked over the pages before him. "When it attacks those women, you feel everything it feels. When it—"

"You get off on it?" Dean growled, hitting the already bloodied man yet again.

"Have you ever been with a woman who was terrified out of her mind? A woman who bucks and claws. Their hearts a racing, adrenaline pumping, and it makes it so much better. It's more intense than anything you've ever felt befo—"

"_Where is it?_" Dean demanded, unable to take anymore of Hadley's words.

"Once he attaches himself to a master, he takes on the same desires his master has. And I told you already, once he chooses a victim, he has to have her. "

Sam and Dean stared at each other for a long moment, dread creeping through their veins. It wanted Cason—they knew that—and now she was sitting at hospital, more than likely in a morphine-induced haze, and vulnerable as hell.

"Cason," they said at the same time.

"You go. I'll stay with him," Sam said, grabbing his phone to call Bennett.

Dean nodded and took off running. He didn't know—couldn't know—when the liderc was going to go after Cason, but he did know that he could be there to protect her when it did. He jumped into the Impala and rolled through every stop sign and red light between the library and the hospital. The sun was just beginning to peak over the horizon when he made it to the hospital. Thankfully, according to Bobby, the liderc strictly attacked at night, which made him breathe a sigh of relief. His mind was whirling, trying to think of a way to burn some herbs in Cason's hospital room without getting funny looks.

"She's asleep, Mr. FBI," her father said when Dean turned up in the doorway.

"I know. I'm not gonna wake her up. I just wanted to check on her, see how she was doing," he replied, glancing towards the bed. She was on her back under a pile of blankets, her arms crossed over her chest.

"She's about the same as she was when you called her two hours ago."

"Good. We're just…I'm sure you know that all his other victims are dead, and we don't want him trying to come finish the job. Hospital security is on standby, but we'll be coming by at night, just to make sure everything's kosher."

"I don't know how I feel about that, Mr. Winchester," Scott Butler said, his voice strong. There was something in it that Dean didn't particularly care for.

"Excuse me?"

"I don't know if you know this, but back home, I'm a police detective myself. I've worked with the FBI before, and I know a thing or two about law enforcement. Made a few friends in my day. So when I found out that you'd been called in to help, I did a little checking up. Turns out, there is no Sam or Dean Winchester employed by the FBI. There are, however, two dead fugitives in the database with those names. You want to tell me what that's about?"

"Yeah," Cason grumbled from the bed behind them. "What's that about?"


	7. I'll Be There

"Cason, it's not what it looks like," Dean said quickly. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he realized how stupid and clichéd it sounded. But then, sometimes clichés were clichés for a reason. He tried to think of some rational way to explain it to her, but there was no way to introduce the topic in a way that would be the slightest bit plausible. Not when she hadn't had any of the eye-opening experiences that others in the past had had.

"I know this sounds absolutely insane, but I wasn't trying to hurt you. I was trying to protect you—"

"And you did a great job," her father interrupted.

"Yeah, I screwed up, I'll admit that. Lately, that's kinda become a pattern for me. But all the other victims have died, and I know that I let you get attacked, Cason, but unlike the others, you're not gonna die…and some of that is because of me. I have screwed up a lot of stuff in my life, but at least I can say that I kinda did that right."

Cason was lying still on the bed, not moving except for the rise and fall of her chest. Her eyes were heavy-lidded and while it was obvious to Dean that she was interested in every word he had to say, it was also obvious that she was completely exhausted and in desperate need of sleep. He could also tell from the way that the nurse was looking at him that if he didn't stop coming in and disrupting Cason's sleep, he wasn't going to be welcome much longer.

Looking at Cason again, he lost all will to explain what he was really doing there. He had been all of four years old when he had been forced into knowing things that only a select few should know. He knew too well that once you knew something, it was impossible to not know it again. Once she knew about all the things that went bump in the night, she would never be able to go back. She wouldn't turn the other cheek when things started happening; instead, she would be out there in the thick of things, fighting a fight that she wasn't prepared for, and it would get her killed.

He hadn't come all this way—across years and miles—too see her get killed.

And so he bit his tongue about everything he wanted to say. He didn't tell her about the incubus that was trying to kill her. He didn't tell her that she should be afraid of the dark or anything else about his world. Instead, he turned to Scott Butler, knowing that if anyone was going to call down the police on them, it would be him.

"Sir, I know you don't believe this—if I were you, I probably wouldn't believe it either—but I'm not trying to hurt your daughter. She's…a hell of a woman, and I…just keep her safe, okay. I swear that once this is finished, once we get the guy who's doing this, I'm gone. Just please believe me when I tell you that I didn't want anything to happen to Cason," Dean said.

He hadn't been that sincere with anyone in a long time—Sam being the exception. He was desperate to make them believe him. Of course, it didn't matter if they did because either way Cason was probably still going to think that he was a criminal and someone who had potentially had something to do with her rape. And when all was said and done, he was still going to get in his car—the one female in his life that had always been there for him—and drive off into the sunset, but he still wanted her to believe him.

"Have called the cops on me yet?" Dean asked quietly.

Scott Butler was silent, his arms crossed over his chest. His lack of response told Dean all he needed to know, but in the even that it hadn't, Cason helped him out.

"He called ten minutes ago," she whispered. "So you might wanna get the hell out of here."

He nodded and quickly crossed the room to where she was lying. Before her father could stop him, he whispered in her ear, "I meant what I said. I never meant for you to get hurt. I'm sorry I couldn't protect you."

That was all he managed before Scott was pulling him away from Cason, and none too gently. Dean didn't fight back—probably one of the few times in his life when he didn't. Instead, he made his way to the door.

"After dark…she won't be safe. Make sure she's never alone after dark," Dean told her father. Then he was gone out the door, trying to fight the feeling of disappointment burning in his gut.

He hadn't expected Cason to welcome him with open arms; he hadn't expected sunshine and puppies and apple pies, either. Coming into it, he had wanted only one thing: to keep her from getting killed. In that regard, he had been successful thus far, but the rest of this whole damn hunt was feeling like a failure. Coming into it, he hadn't really been thinking long-term—he was a hunter, after all, and their definition of a long-term plan was deciding which brand of lighter fluid was going to go on their funeral pyre—but he hadn't wanted it to end this way, that was for damn sure.

As soon as he made it to the elevator, he called Sam. It took just one ring for the younger Winchester to pick up the phone.

"What?" Sam asked, sounding annoyed and slightly out of breath.

"Cason's dad ran a background check on us. Our cover's blown."

"That would explain why Bennett tried to arrest me when he arrested Hadley."

"You got away? Where are you? I'll come pick you up."

"I'm circling back around to the library. If you pull up front, I'll be ready to go."

Dean picked up his brother in front of the library, wearing a coat that was not the same one he had left the motel in the night before. Sam threw open the door and slid into the passenger seat, and they were off in a squeal of tires before the door was even closed. When Sam caught his breath, the questions started immediately.

"What the hell happened, Dean?"

"Cason's dad ran a check on us with some old buddies of his. He knows all about our criminal background."

"Damnit. We're going to have to stash the Impala and get another car until we get out of town," Sam said. Immediately, Dean's eyebrows shot skyward.

"Ditch my baby? Are you serious, Sam?"

"We can ditch her in the woods somewhere off one of the back roads, or we can keep driving it, get caught in it, and then watch it sit in an impound lot until Bobby can figure out some way to get us out of jail. You choose."

Dean sighed, knowing that he was beaten. "Alright, while I stash her, you get the busted green four-door from in front of the motel. And be sure to—"

"Change the plates. I know, Dean."

Dean drove the Impala to the edge of town and stashed it in the woods, his heart breaking as he did so. He caught a ride back into town with a young man—far too trusting of him, but then, he was a college-aged stoner—who had no problems leaving him standing in front of the sketchiest motel in town. Sam was waiting in the green sedan.

"Alright. Where are we headed?" Sam asked as Dean sat in the passenger seat.

"The liderc is going to go after Cason tonight. We know where it's gonna be."

"And every security guard and police officer in the city is going to be looking for us. That makes getting in and out of that hospital ten times harder. And let's not forget that there's going to be violence, which is sure to attract even more attention."

"We could just get in there and burn the herbs. That would buy us some time until she goes home," Dean suggested.

"The longer we're here, the bigger chance we have of getting caught. We need to take care of this now," Sam said. Dean wanted to argue, but he knew that his brother was right.

"When is Bobby going to be here?"

"He should be here by this afternoon. That'll give us a few hours before nightfall to make a plan."

"Alright. We've got to find somewhere to bed down and plan until then," Dean said, trying to think of another place where they could stop and rethink things.

"Dean, we've got to sleep. I'm exhausted and so are you. You're only going to get sloppy and make mistakes if you don't sleep."

"Sam, I'm fin—"

"No you're not. I'm not either. We've been running too long on too little and its not okay. Until Bobby gets here, we sleep." Sam's voice left no room for argument, and Dean knew better than to try when he was like that. So he just nodded and let his brother drive.

They pulled into yet another dumpy motel ten miles away from the one where they had been staying earlier. Once Cason was lucid enough to tell police everything that she knew about them, they would fall on the motel and pour over every detail of anything and everything they had left in the motel. Thankfully any books they had were packed up in Sam's duffel, but they would still find copies of all their information on the liderc. This would put them back on the map as a couple of wackjobs who hadn't conveniently died in a police station explosion.

Sam went inside and got the room, knowing that it was going to be much easier to Cason to identify Dean from security footage than it would be for her to identify Sam. He quickly got them a room on the corner of the building, far from stairs and the front office. It had two windows, allowing for better escape opportunities if that was something they had to resort to.

"We're in room 132," Sam told Dean, tossing a key to his brother. They pushed open the door to their room and stepped inside. Sam didn't bother to pull anything out of his duffel before collapsing onto the bed and falling asleep. Dean made an attempt, but ultimately ended up staring at the ceiling and thinking of all things about this case that had gone so incredibly wrong.

It was only after an hour and a half of staring at the ceiling that he finally drifted off to sleep. His dreams weren't the ones he had hoped for.

_Dean watched the scene from behind the Jeep, and was horrified at what he saw. Blood was still running down Dean's belly—his future self's belly—and he was still in pain. Despite it, though, he sat up beside Cason and held her hand, a calm look on his face, despite the mortal wound in her side. He knew without further study that neither one of them were going to survive their injuries. _

_"We did it. We stopped Lucifer," Cason whispered. "Will you…hold me?"_

_"It'll hurt you," his future self answered, trying not to let the tears spill down his cheeks._

_"We're both already hurting. I don't want to die alone. Please?"_

_"You're not dying. We'll get you to the Jeep, and get you back to camp and you'll be fine." His lie sounded false, even to him._

_"Dean," she said, pulling him down beside her on the ground. "This is it, and you know it. Please stay with me."_

_Finally he nodded and lay down beside her, wrapping his bloody arms around her as they both continued to bleed in the middle of the road. She pressed a bloody kiss to his lips, pulling herself as close to him as possible as she got colder and colder. He returned the kiss, taking care to be gentle with her, though he knew that nothing could really hurt her anymore. Tears flowed freely from both of them._

_"I'm scared," she told him, her voice quiet and breathy._

_"Don't be. You're a good person. You'll be fine."_

_"You will be, too…Do you think we'll…get to be together?" Her voice was getting softer and softer, her eyes glazing over._

_"Hell yes."_

_Then she closed her eyes and they didn't open again. He watched his future self struggle to keep his eyes open, and he could tell that his world was fading to black. He tried to tell himself that Cason was just sleeping, that his future self was just really tired, that this was all a dream and he was going to wake up from it at any minute. The pain he could see written all over his face told him otherwise. He tried to ignore it when his future counterpart started to shiver. _

_Dean couldn't stop himself as he stepped out from behind the Jeep. He wasn't sure what he had intended to do—he couldn't change things, not in this moment, right now—but he found that he wasn't able to sit still and watch himself bleed out in the middle of the road, holding the woman he loved. His future self caught the movement and stared at him, the faintest glimmer of hope in his eyes. _

_"Stop this," he gasped to himself. "You stop this. Do you understand me?"_

_He nodded. "I will."_

_Then Dean closed his eyes and didn't open them again. _

Sam shaking him awake jolted him back to this reality, back from his memories of his short time in the future. He quickly splashed his face with water and wiped at his eyes, as if that could also wipe away the image of himself dying in the middle of a dirt road as he held Cason's dead body. He tried to forget telling her that everything was going to be okay, even when it clearly wasn't.

"Bobby's here," Sam said quietly.

Bobby was sitting at the table, a heavy book open in front of him. He had shed his typical flannel shirt for a suit and tie, his boots for shiny black loafers. His hair was slicked back instead of hidden under a baseball cap.

"You look like hell," Bobby said quietly.

"Yeah, well, it hasn't exactly been a great week. Any ideas, Bobby?" Dean asked.

"Well for one, you can quit your moping. But then we've got to find this thing, and we can trick it into trying something impossible."

"We know where it'll be tonight. Hadley said that it was bonded to him, that it would take on his sexual desires. Once it chooses a victim, it won't stop until he has her, and it wants Cason," Sam explained quietly.

"Alright. That's where we'll be," Bobby said.

"Cason's father turned us in. The police are gonna be all over our asses," Dean mumbled, trying to keep the self-defeated tone at bay.

"Well we're still gonna have to get in there. Are you going to let the police stop you? Especially if it means that your lady love has to deal with a liderc all on her own?" Bobby asked, sarcasm thick in his voice when referring to Cason. Dean didn't bother to correct him.

"Alright, well, let's at our situation…"

Sam pulled up a copy of the hospital schematics that he had acquired from the city's electronic records—perfectly legal, of course—and they began to chart their course of action. Bobby had brought supplies, which included more weapons—not that the boys really needed them, what with the arsenal in the trunk and all, but they figured it was better to be over prepared. As the sun began to set, they made their way to the hospital, Bobby in his suit, Sam and Dean in horrible green scrubs of the hospital orderlies.

Bobby was able to waltz through the security, reaching the room and pulling Cason's father away to discuss "those horrible impostors with no respect for law enforcement." Pushing a mop bucket, Dean ducked into the room, followed closely by Sam with a large bin of dirty laundry. Cason was propped up in bed, her face still pale.

"What the hell are you doing here?" she asked, though there was no real vehemence in her tone.

"I told your father that you wouldn't be safe after dark, and I wasn't lying," Dean told her. "Hadley has a partner, and he's coming for you."

"Cason?" A deep, rumbly voice said from the doorway. They looked over to find a shorter, stockier man standing in the doorway. He had a block head stacked on top of a thick, short neck; his hair was cut close, and the stubble that covered his square jaw matched. A tight t-shirt was pulled taut across his muscled chest. "I don't mean to interrupt. I meant to get up here sooner, but I'm falling apart without you to keep the bar up and running—"

"It's fine, Boston. I was hoping I would be out of here by now, but they don't seem to wanna let me go," she answered quietly, her voice breathy. "But they got the guy, so I'm thinking you should open bar tomorrow just to spite the bastard."

Boston threw his head back a laughed, a wide, lupine smile on his face; it was a smile that Dean didn't particularly care for, and not because he was jealous.

"You can guaran-damn-tee it. Now, how are you feeling?" Boston asked.

"I'm feeling a little better. I mean, I am currently missing part of my spleen, but it might decide to show up one day," Cason joked. "Might be a while before I'm back at work, though."

Boston crossed the room and took Cason's hand in his. "Take your time. You know you'll always have a job at my bar—"

"Boston, are you okay? You're burning up," she whispered, taking his hand and holding it against her cheek.

"Nah, I'm fine. You know me, always running hotter than usual."

"Hotter than usual, huh?" Dean asked, stepping towards Cason.

"It's a fact of life that men's bodies are typically hotter than a woman's…temperature-wise, anyway," Boston replied, his voice calm.

"I don't know about that. She's right, Boston. You feel downright feverish. Hot to the touch," Dean said lightly, grabbing Boston's wrist.

"What are you doing?" Cason whispered, looking back and forth between the men standing at her bedside.

"Cason, can you walk on your own?" Dean asked.

"Not really. Why is this important?"

"It's not," Boston answered for her. "Because you're not going anywhere."

In the blink of an eye, Boston was lashing out, his fist catching Dean in the jaw. Caught off guard, Dean released Boston's wrist and dropped to the floor. Sam launched himself at Boston, but was stopped by a rolling cart that the other man thrust in the way. Pulling himself off the floor, Dean shoved the cart back into Boston, pushing him away from the edge of Cason's bed. Boston's grip on her arm stayed strong, yanking her along with him.

Cason cried out as she was jerked from her bed, pain slicing through her abdomen as she felt her stitches tear. Her side slammed into the tile floor and the breath rushed from her lungs. Boston struggled to pull himself on top of her, pinning her much smaller body beneath his. Before he could get settled, Dean wrapped an arm around his neck and jerked him off of her. As soon as Dean got a good grip, the smell of burnt flesh filled the air, and Dean jerked his arm away.

Cason could feel the heat of Boston's body as he tried once more to climb atop her; he was too hot. It wasn't normal body temperature, she knew that much. She struggled as much as she was able, trying to ignore the pain in her side and the way that her chest complained every time she drew breath. He was so _hot…_

"So fuckin' beautiful," Boston mumbled. "Gotta have—"

He was silenced when Dean slammed the butt of his gun into Boston's head. It didn't knock him out as they had expected it to, but he stopped for a moment, and that was long enough to get him off of Cason.

"Hold him still, Dean!" Bobby called from the doorway, where he was standing, trying to hold Cason's father out of the room. Bobby quickly began chanting in a language that Sam could only presume was Hungarian. Boston strained against Dean's grip, his skin burning hot and torching Dean's clothes. The longer he held on, the more unbearable it became, but somehow, he kept hanging on. As Bobby finished the incantation, there was a bright flash of light and the liderc stopped fighting. Instead, he was still on his knees in front of the older hunter.

"What did you do?" Dean asked, clutching at his burnt arms.

"He's bound to me. Now, he's got to take my orders. Hadley could have been doing this, but he was too damn stupid," Bobby replied. "Now, this is the task I give you: you must carry water in a sieve. Is that understood?"

"That is an impossible task, sir," the liderc said, his voice full of hatred as he realized what had happened.

"An impossible task? Well that's not good is it?"

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, the liderc dropped to the floor, his body writhing an contorting. Bones were popping in and out of place as his giant frame shrank and became more compact. Feathers pushed their way through his skin, and talons grew from his feet before they transformed into claws. Then, one by one, the white feathers slowly turned grey, and then black, as they caught aflame. The creature shrieked and writhed in pain as the fire consumed it's body—hurting for the first time in centures—and burned the creature up, leaving nothing but a tiny pile of ash in the floor and the smell of burnt flesh in the air.

There was a long moment of silence as they all stared at the small pile of ash, as if they were unsure of what they had just witnessed. Sam recovered first, and pulled a dustpan out of his laundry cart, quickly sweeping up the remnants of the beast that had caused so many people so much pain. Dean was the next, crawling over to where Cason lay on the floor, a bloodstain spreading slowly across her abdomen.

"Cason?"

"My stitches busted," she whispered, sounding almost disbelieving. "My stitches busted."

"That's okay. The doctors can fix that," he told her quietly, picking her up and putting her back in bed.

"What just happened?" she asked. Down the hall, she could hear the footsteps of a crowd of people. In minutes, there would be more security and police in her room, putting Sam and Dean in a bad position.

"There's not much time to explain," Dean answered.

"I don't care. I've got to know."

"Tell you what. When you get out of here, I'll meet you at your place and explain it to you. That sound okay?" Dean proposed.

"Not really, but I guess it'll have to do. And don't stand me up either. You said you'd explain it, and I'm holding you to that," Cason said, though it was hard to take her threat seriously as her eyelids were falling shut.

Dean brushed a kiss on her forehead.

"I'll be there."


End file.
